To honor the beloved lion, the bill is called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act.

Overnight, we learned that Zimbabwean officials will seek to extradite Walter Palmer from the United States, for luring a male lion named Cecil out of a park and wounding him in an unauthorized area, before killing him 40 hours later. The HSUS and Humane Society International (HSI) strongly urge the United States to cooperate with the extradition effort.

If Palmer broke the law, plaudits are due to Zimbabwean officials for seeking his prosecution. Apparently, the authorities have charged the guide involved and plan to bring charges against the landowner. Let’s face it — these three horsemen of the apocalypse knew exactly what they were doing. Palmer has a museum full of dead animals registered in the Pope and Young and Safari Club International record books – from lions to polar bears to rhinos, most of them taken with bow and arrow. Throughout his life, he has intentionally sought out the biggest specimens of animals in order to get his name memorialized as a “successful” trophy hunter. He had designs on Cecil because he was one of the biggest lions around. This was not chance, as Palmer claimed; it was a professional hit.

I am glad that there’s such worldwide outrage about Walter Palmer and his trophy killing. What he and his shoot-for-pay guides did was evil. Editorial boards, columnists, and average citizens are talking about his moral crime across the globe, and demanding justice. A White House petition calling on the U.S. government to extradite Palmer had gathered more than 170,000 signatures this morning.

But if the focus begins and ends with Walter Palmer, we will not have appropriately addressed the larger problem. That’s why we are glad to see so many others focused on the larger issues.

Yesterday, Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., co-chair of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus – both stalwart champions of animal welfare – led a letter signed by 48 other House Democratic members urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize its proposed rule listing the African lion as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The United Nations General Assembly has also passed a resolution condemning the poaching and trafficking of wildlife and calling on governments worldwide to take action to tackle these challenges. And on Monday, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a devoted friend to the work of The HSUS and HSI, is introducing a bill to ban all imports of trophies and parts from African lions and other at-risk species into the United States. The bill is called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act.

On Monday, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, D-N.J. will introduce a bill to ban all imports of trophies and parts from African lions and other at-risk species into the United States. The bill is called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act. Above, Cecil the lion and his pride in Hwange National Park, November 2012. (image: paula french/Shutterstock.com)

That’s because Palmer is not so different from thousands of other wealthy trophy hunters in the United States and throughout the world, who hopscotch all over the earth in luxury and comfort to kill the largest “specimens” of the rarest mammals. Baiting, jacklighting, shooting in parks or fenced areas, with guides even drugging animals to allow these aging men to shoot these magnificent creatures, are all par for the course. That’s their hobby, albeit a warped, selfish, and inhumane one. It’s going on every day in the remote reaches of the globe, enabled by professional guides and wildlife officials who are at least complicit if not directly on the take from rich people with a mania for killing the most beautiful creatures in the world.

As for Zimbabwe, this is a country long plagued by terrible leadership in the post-colonial era, and it is a nation deeply corrupted, autocratic, and ruthless when it comes to the treatment of wildlife. Walter Palmer went there because there are too many officials there ready and willing to sell off wildlife to the highest bidder. Good for them for seeking extradition this time– but let’s just not be fooled into thinking that this is a principled, forward-thinking government at work.

Zimbabwe is even allowing wealthy foreigners to slay elephants for trophies. That program is so badly managed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suspended imports of elephant trophies from that country in 2014 and again in 2015.

If Zimbabwe is serious about taking action, it should follow in the footsteps of Botswana and ban all trophy hunting. It should turn the pages of the history books and step into the era of wildlife watching and appreciation. Eco-tourism dwarfs trophy hunting in its economic impact, and it’s got great promise as a sustainable means of livelihood for Africans and African economies. Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and other nations are showing the way. Now it’s time for Zimbabwe to stop allowing targets on the backs of its glorious and diminishing wildlife.

It’s time for these nations to tell the Walter Palmers that the world is no longer open for the kind of business they want to pursue – bloody, ruthless, with no moral value, and one of such depravity that it is an ugly mark on all of humanity.

To honor the beloved lion, the bill is called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act.

Overnight, we learned that Zimbabwean officials will seek to extradite Walter Palmer from the United States, for luring a male lion named Cecil out of a park and wounding him in an unauthorized area, before killing him 40 hours later. The HSUS and Humane Society International (HSI) strongly urge the United States to cooperate with the extradition effort.

If Palmer broke the law, plaudits are due to Zimbabwean officials for seeking his prosecution. Apparently, the authorities have charged the guide involved and plan to bring charges against the landowner. Let’s face it — these three horsemen of the apocalypse knew exactly what they were doing. Palmer has a museum full of dead animals registered in the Pope and Young and Safari Club International record books – from lions to polar bears to rhinos, most of them taken with bow and arrow. Throughout his life, he has intentionally sought out the biggest specimens of animals in order to get his name memorialized as a “successful” trophy hunter. He had designs on Cecil because he was one of the biggest lions around. This was not chance, as Palmer claimed; it was a professional hit.

I am glad that there’s such worldwide outrage about Walter Palmer and his trophy killing. What he and his shoot-for-pay guides did was evil. Editorial boards, columnists, and average citizens are talking about his moral crime across the globe, and demanding justice. A White House petition calling on the U.S. government to extradite Palmer had gathered more than 170,000 signatures this morning.

But if the focus begins and ends with Walter Palmer, we will not have appropriately addressed the larger problem. That’s why we are glad to see so many others focused on the larger issues.

Yesterday, Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., co-chair of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus – both stalwart champions of animal welfare – led a letter signed by 48 other House Democratic members urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize its proposed rule listing the African lion as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The United Nations General Assembly has also passed a resolution condemning the poaching and trafficking of wildlife and calling on governments worldwide to take action to tackle these challenges. And on Monday, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a devoted friend to the work of The HSUS and HSI, is introducing a bill to ban all imports of trophies and parts from African lions and other at-risk species into the United States. The bill is called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act.

On Monday, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, D-N.J. will introduce a bill to ban all imports of trophies and parts from African lions and other at-risk species into the United States. The bill is called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act. Above, Cecil the lion and his pride in Hwange National Park, November 2012. (image: paula french/Shutterstock.com)

That’s because Palmer is not so different from thousands of other wealthy trophy hunters in the United States and throughout the world, who hopscotch all over the earth in luxury and comfort to kill the largest “specimens” of the rarest mammals. Baiting, jacklighting, shooting in parks or fenced areas, with guides even drugging animals to allow these aging men to shoot these magnificent creatures, are all par for the course. That’s their hobby, albeit a warped, selfish, and inhumane one. It’s going on every day in the remote reaches of the globe, enabled by professional guides and wildlife officials who are at least complicit if not directly on the take from rich people with a mania for killing the most beautiful creatures in the world.

As for Zimbabwe, this is a country long plagued by terrible leadership in the post-colonial era, and it is a nation deeply corrupted, autocratic, and ruthless when it comes to the treatment of wildlife. Walter Palmer went there because there are too many officials there ready and willing to sell off wildlife to the highest bidder. Good for them for seeking extradition this time– but let’s just not be fooled into thinking that this is a principled, forward-thinking government at work.

Zimbabwe is even allowing wealthy foreigners to slay elephants for trophies. That program is so badly managed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suspended imports of elephant trophies from that country in 2014 and again in 2015.

If Zimbabwe is serious about taking action, it should follow in the footsteps of Botswana and ban all trophy hunting. It should turn the pages of the history books and step into the era of wildlife watching and appreciation. Eco-tourism dwarfs trophy hunting in its economic impact, and it’s got great promise as a sustainable means of livelihood for Africans and African economies. Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and other nations are showing the way. Now it’s time for Zimbabwe to stop allowing targets on the backs of its glorious and diminishing wildlife.

It’s time for these nations to tell the Walter Palmers that the world is no longer open for the kind of business they want to pursue – bloody, ruthless, with no moral value, and one of such depravity that it is an ugly mark on all of humanity.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/economy/why-medicare-all-makes-more-sense-now-everWhy Medicare-For-All Makes More Sense Now Than Everhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104519646/0/alternet_activism~Why-MedicareForAll-Makes-More-Sense-Now-Than-Ever

Private health insurance drives up costs for everyone.

Medicare -- signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 -- was supposed to be just the first step.

For the fifty years before Medicare's enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that it would bring down the entire legislative package. President Harry Truman made universal health insurance a top priority, but got nowhere.

The five-decade long history of defeat convinced activists to shift to an incremental approach. They decided to start with a sympathetic group and debated which one that should be. The top candidates were seniors and children. On the one hand, covering children was relatively inexpensive and could lead to a lifetime of better health. On the other hand, seniors were most in need of health insurance and were already used to and supportive of Social Security's government-sponsored wage insurance. And they voted.

So the decision was made to start with them. The expectation was that, after Medicare was enacted, children and others would be quickly added. And, indeed, just seven years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law legislation which extended Medicare to people with serious and permanent disabilities.

But then came Watergate, distrust of government, and President Ronald Reagan's famous declaration, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Expansion of Medicare to children or other demographic groups disappeared from the public agenda. But the need for universal high-quality health care, efficiently provided, did not.

Conservatives and centrist Democrats, increasingly in control, looked for alternative approaches. Inclined toward private sector solutions but recognizing that some limited government role was essential, they favored private sector health insurance and savings supported by favorable tax treatment. For those who fell through the cracks and who were deemed worthy, they favored means-tested health insurance provided at the state level, with federal support.

Those are the solutions that have dominated since 1972, despite the obvious advantages of simply expanding Medicare. Means-tested Medicaid, included in the same 1965 legislation that enacted Medicare, was expanded every few years, most recently as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The means-tested State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted in 1997. And, the Affordable Care Act authorized state exchanges offering private health insurance subsidized with income-tested, government subsidies. During these decades, the tax expenditure on health care insurance grew from the fourth largest tax expenditure in 1986 to the largest today -- at a loss of revenue of over $200 billion a year. And during this same period, conservatives amended Medicare to include private health insurance and means-tested elements.

But these methods of providing health insurance are vastly inferior to universal, government-sponsored health insurance -- essentially, Medicare for All. Universal, government-sponsored insurance is the most effective and efficient way to cover everyone. Insurance is least expensive when it covers the most people; the large size of government-sponsored health insurance provides economies of scale and the greatest ability to negotiate over prices and control costs. Moreover, unlike private health insurance, a government plan has no marketing costs and no high CEO salaries. It can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. For these reasons, every other industrialized country provides universal coverage, spends less as a percentage of GDP, and produces better health outcomes.

But we don't have to look to other countries to see the advantages. Medicare covers seniors and people with disabilities, people who, on average, have the worst health and the most expensive medical conditions, requiring the largest numbers of doctor and hospital visits with the concomitant largest number of health care claims. Yet, Medicare's administrative costs are the lowest around. Medicaid, whose administrative costs vary from state to state, is less efficient than Medicare, because its coverage is statewide, not national, and it must impose complicated and expensive means testing, Even with that, both Medicare and Medicaid are significantly more efficient than private health insurance. Compared to Medicare's administrative costs of just 1.4 percent, the administrative costs of private health insurance sponsored by very small firms or purchased by individuals can run as high as 30 percent. Even the administrative costs of health insurance sponsored by large companies typically run around 7 percent.

As a stark illustration of the greater efficiency and effectiveness of Medicare, a proposal floated a few years ago to raise Medicare's initial age of eligibility from 65 to 67 -- requiring people to wait two additional years before they could enroll in Medicare -- would have resulted in increased health care costs for the nation as a whole of $5.7 billion a year and increased premium costs for both Medicare and all other health insurance of about 3 percent. Just as shrinking Medicare's coverage increases costs, expanding coverage would reduce overall health care costs

Imagine if President Bill Clinton in 1993 and President Barack Obama in 2009 had followed the direction of the architects of Medicare, a half century ago. Imagine if they had proposed incremental expansions of Medicare, including lowering the Medicare age to 62 or 55, creating a counterpart universal, government-sponsored Medikidsprogram, covering under Medicare people with pre-existing conditions, and providing all Americans the option of buying into Medicare. We likely would be on our way to Medicare for All, with all of its advantages. We likely would be forecasting long-termsurpluses in our federal budget, with all that would mean for greater spending on other pressing needs. Our businesses would be much more competitive. And we would join other nations in recognizing health care as a human right.

But it is not too late.

This upcoming presidential election could be a powerful defining moment. It could get us back on track to realizing the vision of the architects of Medicare a half century ago. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) believes in Medicare for All, as well as expansion of Social Security. In contrast, Governor Jeb Bush is calling for the phasing out of Medicare and wants to cut Social Security. If each Party's platform reflects these views, the American people will have a clear choice.

I see no better way to celebrate Medicare reaching its fiftieth anniversary than to expand Medicare. If we follow the lead of those visionary architects fifty years ago, those who come after us will inherit a nation where affordable, first class health insurance -- Medicare for All -- is a birthright.

Medicare -- signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 -- was supposed to be just the first step.

For the fifty years before Medicare's enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that it would bring down the entire legislative package. President Harry Truman made universal health insurance a top priority, but got nowhere.

The five-decade long history of defeat convinced activists to shift to an incremental approach. They decided to start with a sympathetic group and debated which one that should be. The top candidates were seniors and children. On the one hand, covering children was relatively inexpensive and could lead to a lifetime of better health. On the other hand, seniors were most in need of health insurance and were already used to and supportive of Social Security's government-sponsored wage insurance. And they voted.

So the decision was made to start with them. The expectation was that, after Medicare was enacted, children and others would be quickly added. And, indeed, just seven years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law legislation which extended Medicare to people with serious and permanent disabilities.

But then came Watergate, distrust of government, and President Ronald Reagan's famous declaration, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Expansion of Medicare to children or other demographic groups disappeared from the public agenda. But the need for universal high-quality health care, efficiently provided, did not.

Conservatives and centrist Democrats, increasingly in control, looked for alternative approaches. Inclined toward private sector solutions but recognizing that some limited government role was essential, they favored private sector health insurance and savings supported by favorable tax treatment. For those who fell through the cracks and who were deemed worthy, they favored means-tested health insurance provided at the state level, with federal support.

Those are the solutions that have dominated since 1972, despite the obvious advantages of simply expanding Medicare. Means-tested Medicaid, included in the same 1965 legislation that enacted Medicare, was expanded every few years, most recently as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The means-tested State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted in 1997. And, the Affordable Care Act authorized state exchanges offering private health insurance subsidized with income-tested, government subsidies. During these decades, the tax expenditure on health care insurance grew from the fourth largest tax expenditure in 1986 to the largest today -- at a loss of revenue of over $200 billion a year. And during this same period, conservatives amended Medicare to include private health insurance and means-tested elements.

But these methods of providing health insurance are vastly inferior to universal, government-sponsored health insurance -- essentially, Medicare for All. Universal, government-sponsored insurance is the most effective and efficient way to cover everyone. Insurance is least expensive when it covers the most people; the large size of government-sponsored health insurance provides economies of scale and the greatest ability to negotiate over prices and control costs. Moreover, unlike private health insurance, a government plan has no marketing costs and no high CEO salaries. It can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. For these reasons, every other industrialized country provides universal coverage, spends less as a percentage of GDP, and produces better health outcomes.

But we don't have to look to other countries to see the advantages. Medicare covers seniors and people with disabilities, people who, on average, have the worst health and the most expensive medical conditions, requiring the largest numbers of doctor and hospital visits with the concomitant largest number of health care claims. Yet, Medicare's administrative costs are the lowest around. Medicaid, whose administrative costs vary from state to state, is less efficient than Medicare, because its coverage is statewide, not national, and it must impose complicated and expensive means testing, Even with that, both Medicare and Medicaid are significantly more efficient than private health insurance. Compared to Medicare's administrative costs of just 1.4 percent, the administrative costs of private health insurance sponsored by very small firms or purchased by individuals can run as high as 30 percent. Even the administrative costs of health insurance sponsored by large companies typically run around 7 percent.

As a stark illustration of the greater efficiency and effectiveness of Medicare, a proposal floated a few years ago to raise Medicare's initial age of eligibility from 65 to 67 -- requiring people to wait two additional years before they could enroll in Medicare -- would have resulted in increased health care costs for the nation as a whole of $5.7 billion a year and increased premium costs for both Medicare and all other health insurance of about 3 percent. Just as shrinking Medicare's coverage increases costs, expanding coverage would reduce overall health care costs

Imagine if President Bill Clinton in 1993 and President Barack Obama in 2009 had followed the direction of the architects of Medicare, a half century ago. Imagine if they had proposed incremental expansions of Medicare, including lowering the Medicare age to 62 or 55, creating a counterpart universal, government-sponsored Medikidsprogram, covering under Medicare people with pre-existing conditions, and providing all Americans the option of buying into Medicare. We likely would be on our way to Medicare for All, with all of its advantages. We likely would be forecasting long-termsurpluses in our federal budget, with all that would mean for greater spending on other pressing needs. Our businesses would be much more competitive. And we would join other nations in recognizing health care as a human right.

But it is not too late.

This upcoming presidential election could be a powerful defining moment. It could get us back on track to realizing the vision of the architects of Medicare a half century ago. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) believes in Medicare for All, as well as expansion of Social Security. In contrast, Governor Jeb Bush is calling for the phasing out of Medicare and wants to cut Social Security. If each Party's platform reflects these views, the American people will have a clear choice.

I see no better way to celebrate Medicare reaching its fiftieth anniversary than to expand Medicare. If we follow the lead of those visionary architects fifty years ago, those who come after us will inherit a nation where affordable, first class health insurance -- Medicare for All -- is a birthright.

“The sun is now setting on an incredible day of speaking truth to power and effective direct action,” Greenpeace activist Georgia Hirsty said yesterday, one of the climbers rappelled from the bridge.

“Kayaktivists occupied the sea, local activists protested from shore, Greenpeace occupied the air and Shell’s Fennica did not pass! I’m filled with gratitude and humility for all those who have carried this fight and for my fellow climbers who, although too far away to speak to, are beautifully represented by their strong, billowing flags steadily pointing for Shell to turn around and stay out of the Arctic,” Hirsty said.

The Shell Oil vessel, the MSV Fennica, after receiving repairs to its damaged hull, is now trying to leave the Portland Port to take the required capping stack for the oil wells to the drill site in the Arctic Ocean. Last week, the Obama administration granted federal permits that clear the way for the oil company to begin drilling. The company is only permitted to drill the top sections of its wells, thousands of feet above any projected oil, but once the Fennica is at Shell’s drill site, Shell can reapply for federal approval to drill into hydrocarbon zones in the Chukchi Sea.

Streamers float in the wind under the St. Johns Bridge as activists climbed under the bridge in an attempt to prevent the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica from joining the rest of Shell’s Artctic drilling fleet. According to the latest federal permit, the Fennica must be at Shells drill site before Shell can reapply for federal approval to drill deep enough for oil in the Chukchi Sea. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

An activist under the St. Johns Bridge in an attempt to prevent the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica from passing underneath the bridge on its way to join the rest of Shell’s drilling fleet. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Activists hang under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, In an attempt to block the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica, July 29. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Activists hang under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon. The climbers have enough supplies to last for several days. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Kayaktivists and activists hang under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, in an attempt to block the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica. The climbers are trying to keep the ship from passing underneath the bridge on its way to join Shell’s drilling fleet. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

A flotilla of kayaktivists floats underneath the activists hanging from the St. Johns Bridge in a channel of the Williamette River. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

According to the latest federal permit, the Fennica must be at Shell’s drill site before Shell can reapply for federal approval to drill deep enough for oil in the Chukchi Sea. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

A Greenpeace climber hangs under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, In an attempt to block the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Streamers float in the wind under the St. Johns Bridge In as activists hang under the bridge in an attempt to prevent the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica from joining the rest of Shell’s Artctic drilling fleet. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

“The sun is now setting on an incredible day of speaking truth to power and effective direct action,” Greenpeace activist Georgia Hirsty said yesterday, one of the climbers rappelled from the bridge.

“Kayaktivists occupied the sea, local activists protested from shore, Greenpeace occupied the air and Shell’s Fennica did not pass! I’m filled with gratitude and humility for all those who have carried this fight and for my fellow climbers who, although too far away to speak to, are beautifully represented by their strong, billowing flags steadily pointing for Shell to turn around and stay out of the Arctic,” Hirsty said.

The Shell Oil vessel, the MSV Fennica, after receiving repairs to its damaged hull, is now trying to leave the Portland Port to take the required capping stack for the oil wells to the drill site in the Arctic Ocean. Last week, the Obama administration granted federal permits that clear the way for the oil company to begin drilling. The company is only permitted to drill the top sections of its wells, thousands of feet above any projected oil, but once the Fennica is at Shell’s drill site, Shell can reapply for federal approval to drill into hydrocarbon zones in the Chukchi Sea.

Streamers float in the wind under the St. Johns Bridge as activists climbed under the bridge in an attempt to prevent the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica from joining the rest of Shell’s Artctic drilling fleet. According to the latest federal permit, the Fennica must be at Shells drill site before Shell can reapply for federal approval to drill deep enough for oil in the Chukchi Sea. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

An activist under the St. Johns Bridge in an attempt to prevent the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica from passing underneath the bridge on its way to join the rest of Shell’s drilling fleet. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Activists hang under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, In an attempt to block the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica, July 29. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Activists hang under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon. The climbers have enough supplies to last for several days. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Kayaktivists and activists hang under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, in an attempt to block the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica. The climbers are trying to keep the ship from passing underneath the bridge on its way to join Shell’s drilling fleet. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

A flotilla of kayaktivists floats underneath the activists hanging from the St. Johns Bridge in a channel of the Williamette River. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

According to the latest federal permit, the Fennica must be at Shell’s drill site before Shell can reapply for federal approval to drill deep enough for oil in the Chukchi Sea. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

A Greenpeace climber hangs under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, In an attempt to block the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

Streamers float in the wind under the St. Johns Bridge In as activists hang under the bridge in an attempt to prevent the Shell leased icebreaker, MSV Fennica from joining the rest of Shell’s Artctic drilling fleet. (Photo credit: Greenpeace USA)

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/environment/bill-mckibben-says-divestment-movement-succeeding-and-he-may-be-rightBill McKibben Says the Divestment Movement Is Succeeding — and He May Be Righthttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104090402/0/alternet_activism~Bill-McKibben-Says-the-Divestment-Movement-Is-Succeeding-%e2%80%94-and-He-May-Be-Right

The divestment movement isn't even a blip on the world’s capital markets, but its strategy is less about economics than about politics and morality.

Nestled in Vermont’s bucolic Champlain valley, Middlebury College is a seedbed of environmental activism. Middlebury students started 350.org, the environmental organization that is fighting climate change and coordinating the global campaign for fossil-fuel divestment. Bill McKibben, the writer and environmentalist who is spearheading the campaign, has taught there since 2001. Yet Middlebury has declined to sell the oil, gas, and coal company holdings in its $1 billion endowment.

McKibben’s alma mater, Harvard University — which has a $36 billion endowment, the largest of any university — also has decided not to divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies. Indeed, virtually all of the United States’ wealthiest universities, foundations, and public pension funds have resisted pressures to sell their stakes in fossil fuel companies. And while a handful of big institutional investors — Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Stanford University, and AXA, a French insurance company — have pledged to sell some of their coal investments, coal companies account for less than 1 percent of the value of publicly traded stocks and an even smaller sliver of endowments.

Put simply, the divestment movement is not even a blip on the world’s capital markets.

At this point to have everyone from the Episcopal Church to Stanford to the biggest insurance carrier in France to the biggest pool of investment capital on earth (Norway's sovereign wealth fund) taking steps along this path is almost unbelievable. Almost from the start, academics have called it the fastest growing such anti-corporate campaign in history, and it's clearly accelerating by the day.

The divestment movement isn't even a blip on the world’s capital markets, but its strategy is less about economics than about politics and morality.

Nestled in Vermont’s bucolic Champlain valley, Middlebury College is a seedbed of environmental activism. Middlebury students started 350.org, the environmental organization that is fighting climate change and coordinating the global campaign for fossil-fuel divestment. Bill McKibben, the writer and environmentalist who is spearheading the campaign, has taught there since 2001. Yet Middlebury has declined to sell the oil, gas, and coal company holdings in its $1 billion endowment.

McKibben’s alma mater, Harvard University — which has a $36 billion endowment, the largest of any university — also has decided not to divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies. Indeed, virtually all of the United States’ wealthiest universities, foundations, and public pension funds have resisted pressures to sell their stakes in fossil fuel companies. And while a handful of big institutional investors — Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Stanford University, and AXA, a French insurance company — have pledged to sell some of their coal investments, coal companies account for less than 1 percent of the value of publicly traded stocks and an even smaller sliver of endowments.

Put simply, the divestment movement is not even a blip on the world’s capital markets.

At this point to have everyone from the Episcopal Church to Stanford to the biggest insurance carrier in France to the biggest pool of investment capital on earth (Norway's sovereign wealth fund) taking steps along this path is almost unbelievable. Almost from the start, academics have called it the fastest growing such anti-corporate campaign in history, and it's clearly accelerating by the day.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/direct-democracy-work-ten-states-pot-legalization-initiative-effortsThe Marijuana Legalization Express: 10 States That Could Vote on It Next Yearhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104155078/0/alternet_activism~The-Marijuana-Legalization-Express-States-That-Could-Vote-on-It-Next-Year

After they count the ballots on election day next year, a whole lot of Americans could be living in legal marijuana states.

Marijuana is going to be part of the political conversation between now and Election Day 2016. Support for legalization is now consistently polling above 50% nationwide, four states and DC have already voted to legalize it, and activists in at least 10 states are doing their best to make pot an issue this time around.

In those 10 states, they're working to take marijuana legalization directly to the voters in the form of initiatives. Not all of those efforts will actually make the ballot—mass signature-gathering campaigns require not only enthusiasm but cold, hard cash to succeed—and not all of those that qualify will necessarily win, but in a handful of states, including the nation's most populous, the prospects for passing pot legalization next year look quite good.

Presidential contenders are already finding the question of pot legalization unavoidable. They're mostly finding the topic uncomfortable, with none—not even Rand Paul—embracing full-on legalization, most staking out middling positions, and some Republicans looking for traction by fervently opposing it. Just this week, Chris Christie vowed to undo legalization where it already exists if he is elected president.

It's worth noting that it is the initiative process that is enabling the process of ending pot prohibition. Only half the states have it—mostly west of the Mississippi—but the use of citizen initiatives has led the way first for medical marijuana legalization and now with outright legalization.

In the face of overwhelming support for medical marijuana, state legislators proved remarkably recalcitrant. It took five years after California voters made it the first medical marijuana state for Hawaii to become the first state to pass it at the legislature. Even now, with nearly half the states having approved some form of medical marijuana, getting such bills through legislatures is excruciatingly difficult, and results in overly restrictive and ineffective state programs.

It's been the same with legalization. Voters approved legalization via initiatives in Colorado and Washington in 2012 and Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia last year. But even in states with majorities or pluralities in favor of legalization, legalization bills haven't gotten passed.

Efforts are afoot at a number of statehouses, and one of them will eventually be the first to legislate legalization, maybe even next year (it's not outside the realm of possibility), but for now, if legalization is going to continue to expand, it's going to come thanks to the initiative states. In fact, marijuana policy reform is an issue on which elected officials have been so tin-eared and unresponsive to the will of the voters that their failure is an advertisement for the utility of direct democracy.

By the time the polls close on Election Day 2016, we could see the number of legalization states double and the number of Americans living free of pot prohibition quadruple to more than 60 million—or more. Attitudes on marijuana are shifting fast, and by this time next year, the prospects of even more states actually approving legalization could be even higher.

But right now, we have five states where the prospects of getting on the ballot and winning look good, three states where it looks iffy but could surprise, and four states where it looks like a long-shot next year.

Looking Good for Legalization

Arizona

A June Rocky Mountain Poll from the Behavioral Research Center has support for legalization at 53%, and Arizonans could find themselves having to decide which competing legalization proposal they like best.

The Marijuana Policy Project-backed Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or five grams of concentrates, as well as allow home grows of up to six plants per person, with a cap of 12 plants per household. The initiative also envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a tax of 15%. Localities could bar pot businesses or even home growing, but only upon a popular vote.

The second initiative, from Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or concentrates, as well as allow for home grows of up to 12 plants, and home growers could keep the fruits of their harvests. The initiative envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax on retail sales. It would allow localities to regulate, but not ban marijuana businesses.

Both campaigns are in the signature-gathering process. They will need 150,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2016 ballot and they have until next July to get them.

California

A May PPIC poll had support for legalization at 54%, and Californians have a variety of initiatives to choose from. At least six legalization initiatives have already been cleared for signature-gathering by state officials, but everybody is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That would be the much anticipated initiative from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, which represents many of the major players in the state, as well as deep-pocketed outside players from all the major drug reform groups. The coalition's initiative was delayed while it waited for the release of a report from Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy, led by pro-legalization Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). That report came out last week, and the coalition says it expects to have its initiative ready within a few weeks.

The delays in getting the initiative out and the signature-gathering campaign underway are going to put pressure on the campaign. To qualify for the ballot, initiatives must come up with some 366,000 valid voter signatures, and that takes time, as well as money. Most of the other initiatives don't have the money to make a serious run at signatures, but the coalition does. For all of the California legalization initiatives, the real hard deadline for signatures is February 4.

Maine

The most recent polling, a Public Policy Polling survey from 2013, had only a plurality (48% to 39%) favoring legalization, but that's nearly two years old, and if Maine is following national trends, support should only have increased since then. Maine is winnable.

This is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative has competition from local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize possession of up to an ounce of buds and allow for six-plant home grows. It would also create a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax above and beyond the state sales tax, and it would allow for marijuana social clubs as well as retail stores.

The competing initiative, from Legalize Maine, is a bit looser on possession and home grows, allowing up to 2.5 ounces and six mature and 12 immature plants. Unlike the MPP initiative, which would have the Alcohol Bureau regulate marijuana, this one would leave it to the Department of Agriculture. It would also allow for marijuana social clubs as well as pot shops and would impose a 10% flat sales tax.

Initiatives need 61,126 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. The campaigns have until next spring to get them in.

Massachusetts

A Suffolk/Boston Herald poll from February has support for legalization at 53% in the Bay State, where activists have since the turn of the century been laying the groundwork for legalization with a series of successful non-binding policy questions demonstrating public support, not to mention voting to approve medical marijuana in 2008 and decriminalization in 2012.

Like Arizona and Maine, Massachusetts is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative is being contested by local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is still in the initiative-drafting process and details of its initiative remain unknown.

Meanwhile, local activists organized as Bay State Repeal have come up with a very liberal initiative that would legalize possession and cultivation—without limits—and allow for marijuana farmers' markets and social clubs. This initiative would also create a system of licensed, regulated and taxed marijuana commerce.

Neither Massachusetts initiative has been approved for signature-gathering yet. The state has a two-phase signature-gathering process, with a first phase for nine weeks between September and December. Then, if sufficient signatures are gathered, the legislature must act on the measure before next May. If it fails to approve the measure, a second, eight-week signature-gathering process commences. Initiatives will need 64,750 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Nevada

A Moore Information poll from 2013 had support for legalization at 54%, and legalization supporters will most definitely have a chance to put those numbers to the test next year because the Marijuana Policy Project-backed Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol initiative has already qualified for the ballot. It would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds and an eight-ounce of concentrates, and it would allow for the home growing of six pot plants per adult, with a household limit of 12. Home growers could keep the fruits of their harvest. The initiative would also create a legal marijuana commerce system with a 15% excise tax.

There's a Decent Chance

Michigan

An April Michigan Poll had support for legalization at 51%, which doesn't leave much margin for error. Nonetheless, at least two groups are embarked on legalization initiative campaigns (a third appears to have gone dormant).

The more grassroots Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Initiative Committee would legalize the possession of up to 2.5 ounces by adults and allow home grows of 12 mature plants and an unlimited number of immature ones. Home growers could possess the fruits of all their harvest. The non-commercial transfer of up to 2 ½ ounces would also be legal. A system of regulated marijuana commerce is included and would feature a 10% tax.

The competing Michigan Cannabis Coalition initiative appears to have no personal possession limits, but would only allow for home grows of two plants. It provides an option for localities to ban home grows, or to raise the limit to four plants. It envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce, with taxes to be set by the legislature.

Michigan only rates the "decent chance" category because of its razor-thin support for legalization and because of its history of marijuana legalization initiatives failing to qualify for the ballot. Initiatives will need more than 250,000 voter signatures to qualify, and they have until next June 1 to do so. Both campaigns have just gotten underway with signature-gathering.

Missouri

A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll from February showed only 45% in favor of marijuana legalization, but Missouri activists organized as Show-Me Cannabis have been waging a serious, hard-fought campaign to educate Missourians on the issue, and it could pay off next year.

Their initiative would legalize up to 12 ounces of buds, one ounce of concentrates, a pound of edibles and 20 ounces of cannabis liquids, as well as allow for home grows of up to six plants. It would also create a medical marijuana program and a legal, regulated marijuana commerce.

Since it is a constitutional amendment, the initiative will need at least 157,788 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. Organizers will have until next May to get them.

Ohio

Ohio is a special case. The ResponsibleOhio initiative either will or will not have qualified for the ballot by midnight Thursday. If it qualifies, the state could well be the next one to legalize marijuana, since it would go to a vote this November. An April Quinnipiac University poll had support for legalization at 52%.

If it doesn't qualify, others are lined up to take another shot. Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis have a constitutional amendment initiative with no specified possession limits for people 18 and over. It also allows home grows of 24 plants per person, with a limit of 96 plants per household.

Constitutional amendments need 385,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot; initiated statutes only need 115,000. Like Michigan, however, Ohio is a state with a history of initiatives failing to make the ballot.

Not Likely Next Year

In the states below, activists are undertaking efforts to get on the ballot next year, but the odds are against them, either because of poor (or no) polling, or lack of funds and organization, or both.

Mississippi

The Mississippi Alliance for Cannabis is sponsoring Proposition 48, a constitutional amendment initiative that "would legalize the use, cultivation and sale of cannabis and industrial hemp. Cannabis related crimes would be punished in a manner similar to, or to a lesser degree, than alcohol related crimes. Cannabis sales would be taxed 7%. Cannabis sold for medical purposes and industrial hemp would be exempt from taxation. The Governor would be required to pardon persons convicted of non-violent cannabis crimes against the State of Mississippi."

There is no recent polling on attitudes toward legalization in the state, but it is one of the most conservative in the country. To get on the ballot, supporters need to gather 107,216 valid voter signatures by December 17, one year after they started seeking them.

Montana

Ballot Issue 7, which would legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults, but not create a legal marijuana commerce, is the brainchild of a Glendive man who says he plans to bicycle across the state to gather support and signatures.

Prospects for 2016

Five states are well-positioned to legalize marijuana via initiatives next year, another three could possibly do it, and that would be further evidence that the apparent ongoing sea change in marijuana policy is no fluke. It's going to be interesting.

After they count the ballots on election day next year, a whole lot of Americans could be living in legal marijuana states.

Marijuana is going to be part of the political conversation between now and Election Day 2016. Support for legalization is now consistently polling above 50% nationwide, four states and DC have already voted to legalize it, and activists in at least 10 states are doing their best to make pot an issue this time around.

In those 10 states, they're working to take marijuana legalization directly to the voters in the form of initiatives. Not all of those efforts will actually make the ballot—mass signature-gathering campaigns require not only enthusiasm but cold, hard cash to succeed—and not all of those that qualify will necessarily win, but in a handful of states, including the nation's most populous, the prospects for passing pot legalization next year look quite good.

Presidential contenders are already finding the question of pot legalization unavoidable. They're mostly finding the topic uncomfortable, with none—not even Rand Paul—embracing full-on legalization, most staking out middling positions, and some Republicans looking for traction by fervently opposing it. Just this week, Chris Christie vowed to undo legalization where it already exists if he is elected president.

It's worth noting that it is the initiative process that is enabling the process of ending pot prohibition. Only half the states have it—mostly west of the Mississippi—but the use of citizen initiatives has led the way first for medical marijuana legalization and now with outright legalization.

In the face of overwhelming support for medical marijuana, state legislators proved remarkably recalcitrant. It took five years after California voters made it the first medical marijuana state for Hawaii to become the first state to pass it at the legislature. Even now, with nearly half the states having approved some form of medical marijuana, getting such bills through legislatures is excruciatingly difficult, and results in overly restrictive and ineffective state programs.

It's been the same with legalization. Voters approved legalization via initiatives in Colorado and Washington in 2012 and Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia last year. But even in states with majorities or pluralities in favor of legalization, legalization bills haven't gotten passed.

Efforts are afoot at a number of statehouses, and one of them will eventually be the first to legislate legalization, maybe even next year (it's not outside the realm of possibility), but for now, if legalization is going to continue to expand, it's going to come thanks to the initiative states. In fact, marijuana policy reform is an issue on which elected officials have been so tin-eared and unresponsive to the will of the voters that their failure is an advertisement for the utility of direct democracy.

By the time the polls close on Election Day 2016, we could see the number of legalization states double and the number of Americans living free of pot prohibition quadruple to more than 60 million—or more. Attitudes on marijuana are shifting fast, and by this time next year, the prospects of even more states actually approving legalization could be even higher.

But right now, we have five states where the prospects of getting on the ballot and winning look good, three states where it looks iffy but could surprise, and four states where it looks like a long-shot next year.

Looking Good for Legalization

Arizona

A June Rocky Mountain Poll from the Behavioral Research Center has support for legalization at 53%, and Arizonans could find themselves having to decide which competing legalization proposal they like best.

The Marijuana Policy Project-backed Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or five grams of concentrates, as well as allow home grows of up to six plants per person, with a cap of 12 plants per household. The initiative also envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a tax of 15%. Localities could bar pot businesses or even home growing, but only upon a popular vote.

The second initiative, from Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or concentrates, as well as allow for home grows of up to 12 plants, and home growers could keep the fruits of their harvests. The initiative envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax on retail sales. It would allow localities to regulate, but not ban marijuana businesses.

Both campaigns are in the signature-gathering process. They will need 150,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2016 ballot and they have until next July to get them.

California

A May PPIC poll had support for legalization at 54%, and Californians have a variety of initiatives to choose from. At least six legalization initiatives have already been cleared for signature-gathering by state officials, but everybody is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That would be the much anticipated initiative from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, which represents many of the major players in the state, as well as deep-pocketed outside players from all the major drug reform groups. The coalition's initiative was delayed while it waited for the release of a report from Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy, led by pro-legalization Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). That report came out last week, and the coalition says it expects to have its initiative ready within a few weeks.

The delays in getting the initiative out and the signature-gathering campaign underway are going to put pressure on the campaign. To qualify for the ballot, initiatives must come up with some 366,000 valid voter signatures, and that takes time, as well as money. Most of the other initiatives don't have the money to make a serious run at signatures, but the coalition does. For all of the California legalization initiatives, the real hard deadline for signatures is February 4.

Maine

The most recent polling, a Public Policy Polling survey from 2013, had only a plurality (48% to 39%) favoring legalization, but that's nearly two years old, and if Maine is following national trends, support should only have increased since then. Maine is winnable.

This is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative has competition from local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize possession of up to an ounce of buds and allow for six-plant home grows. It would also create a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax above and beyond the state sales tax, and it would allow for marijuana social clubs as well as retail stores.

The competing initiative, from Legalize Maine, is a bit looser on possession and home grows, allowing up to 2.5 ounces and six mature and 12 immature plants. Unlike the MPP initiative, which would have the Alcohol Bureau regulate marijuana, this one would leave it to the Department of Agriculture. It would also allow for marijuana social clubs as well as pot shops and would impose a 10% flat sales tax.

Initiatives need 61,126 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. The campaigns have until next spring to get them in.

Massachusetts

A Suffolk/Boston Herald poll from February has support for legalization at 53% in the Bay State, where activists have since the turn of the century been laying the groundwork for legalization with a series of successful non-binding policy questions demonstrating public support, not to mention voting to approve medical marijuana in 2008 and decriminalization in 2012.

Like Arizona and Maine, Massachusetts is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative is being contested by local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is still in the initiative-drafting process and details of its initiative remain unknown.

Meanwhile, local activists organized as Bay State Repeal have come up with a very liberal initiative that would legalize possession and cultivation—without limits—and allow for marijuana farmers' markets and social clubs. This initiative would also create a system of licensed, regulated and taxed marijuana commerce.

Neither Massachusetts initiative has been approved for signature-gathering yet. The state has a two-phase signature-gathering process, with a first phase for nine weeks between September and December. Then, if sufficient signatures are gathered, the legislature must act on the measure before next May. If it fails to approve the measure, a second, eight-week signature-gathering process commences. Initiatives will need 64,750 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Nevada

A Moore Information poll from 2013 had support for legalization at 54%, and legalization supporters will most definitely have a chance to put those numbers to the test next year because the Marijuana Policy Project-backed Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol initiative has already qualified for the ballot. It would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds and an eight-ounce of concentrates, and it would allow for the home growing of six pot plants per adult, with a household limit of 12. Home growers could keep the fruits of their harvest. The initiative would also create a legal marijuana commerce system with a 15% excise tax.

There's a Decent Chance

Michigan

An April Michigan Poll had support for legalization at 51%, which doesn't leave much margin for error. Nonetheless, at least two groups are embarked on legalization initiative campaigns (a third appears to have gone dormant).

The more grassroots Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Initiative Committee would legalize the possession of up to 2.5 ounces by adults and allow home grows of 12 mature plants and an unlimited number of immature ones. Home growers could possess the fruits of all their harvest. The non-commercial transfer of up to 2 ½ ounces would also be legal. A system of regulated marijuana commerce is included and would feature a 10% tax.

The competing Michigan Cannabis Coalition initiative appears to have no personal possession limits, but would only allow for home grows of two plants. It provides an option for localities to ban home grows, or to raise the limit to four plants. It envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce, with taxes to be set by the legislature.

Michigan only rates the "decent chance" category because of its razor-thin support for legalization and because of its history of marijuana legalization initiatives failing to qualify for the ballot. Initiatives will need more than 250,000 voter signatures to qualify, and they have until next June 1 to do so. Both campaigns have just gotten underway with signature-gathering.

Missouri

A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll from February showed only 45% in favor of marijuana legalization, but Missouri activists organized as Show-Me Cannabis have been waging a serious, hard-fought campaign to educate Missourians on the issue, and it could pay off next year.

Their initiative would legalize up to 12 ounces of buds, one ounce of concentrates, a pound of edibles and 20 ounces of cannabis liquids, as well as allow for home grows of up to six plants. It would also create a medical marijuana program and a legal, regulated marijuana commerce.

Since it is a constitutional amendment, the initiative will need at least 157,788 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. Organizers will have until next May to get them.

Ohio

Ohio is a special case. The ResponsibleOhio initiative either will or will not have qualified for the ballot by midnight Thursday. If it qualifies, the state could well be the next one to legalize marijuana, since it would go to a vote this November. An April Quinnipiac University poll had support for legalization at 52%.

If it doesn't qualify, others are lined up to take another shot. Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis have a constitutional amendment initiative with no specified possession limits for people 18 and over. It also allows home grows of 24 plants per person, with a limit of 96 plants per household.

Constitutional amendments need 385,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot; initiated statutes only need 115,000. Like Michigan, however, Ohio is a state with a history of initiatives failing to make the ballot.

Not Likely Next Year

In the states below, activists are undertaking efforts to get on the ballot next year, but the odds are against them, either because of poor (or no) polling, or lack of funds and organization, or both.

Mississippi

The Mississippi Alliance for Cannabis is sponsoring Proposition 48, a constitutional amendment initiative that "would legalize the use, cultivation and sale of cannabis and industrial hemp. Cannabis related crimes would be punished in a manner similar to, or to a lesser degree, than alcohol related crimes. Cannabis sales would be taxed 7%. Cannabis sold for medical purposes and industrial hemp would be exempt from taxation. The Governor would be required to pardon persons convicted of non-violent cannabis crimes against the State of Mississippi."

There is no recent polling on attitudes toward legalization in the state, but it is one of the most conservative in the country. To get on the ballot, supporters need to gather 107,216 valid voter signatures by December 17, one year after they started seeking them.

Montana

Ballot Issue 7, which would legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults, but not create a legal marijuana commerce, is the brainchild of a Glendive man who says he plans to bicycle across the state to gather support and signatures.

Prospects for 2016

Five states are well-positioned to legalize marijuana via initiatives next year, another three could possibly do it, and that would be further evidence that the apparent ongoing sea change in marijuana policy is no fluke. It's going to be interesting.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/environment/us-national-parks-are-plagued-serious-air-pollution-studyA Day in the Park May Be Hazardous to Your Healthhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103905610/0/alternet_activism~A-Day-in-the-Park-May-Be-Hazardous-to-Your-Health

A study has found that U.S. National Parks are plagued by serious air pollution.

A new analysis, released today by National Parks Conservation Association, shows that every one of the 48 national parks with the greatest Clean Air Act protections are plagued by significant air pollution problems and climate change impacts. In fact, air quality in parks can be as bad – or worse – than in some major cities due to emissions from outdated coal plants and other sources of pollution.

Of the 48 parks studied, 36 at times experienced "moderate" or worse ozone pollution according to the Air Quality Index developed by the Environmental Protection Agency. These levels of air pollution are risky for especially sensitive populations such as children who have asthma (roughly one out of every ten children in the United States). Even more troubling, four parks — Joshua Tree, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks — regularly had ozone levels that are known to be unhealthy for most park visitors.

"As Americans flock to our national parks this summer to enjoy the great outdoors, they expect and deserve to find clean, healthy air. Sadly that is not always the case," said Ulla Reeves, manager of NPCA's Clean Air Campaign. "Our parks remain under threat from air pollution, harming visitors' health, reducing visibility and driving the impacts of climate change."

The analysis — "Polluted Parks" — graded the pollution-related damage in the 48 national parks required by the Clean Air Act to have the best possible air quality. The report highlights 12 parks across the nation that earned a D or lower in at least one of three categories — threat to public health, hazy skies and impacts from climate change.

Key Findings:

75 percent of the 48 iconic national parks have air quality that's unhealthy at times.

Four parks — Joshua Tree, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks — regularly have air that's known to be unhealthy for most park visitors and rangers. In some cases, the parks have unsafe air for more than a month each year, usually during the summer.

Haze pollution limits how far you can see in 100 percent of the national parks. On average, visitors miss out on 50 miles of scenery — a distance equivalent to the length of Rhode Island.

90 percent of our national parks are currently experiencing extreme weather that scientists link to climate-changing air pollution: They are hotter, wetter, or drier than they were for most of the past century.

The Regional Haze Rule is the program under the Clean Air Act responsible for protecting air quality in our parks. But due to loopholes in the rule, states and polluters can game the system to avoid cleaning up. For example, Nebraska opted to allow its biggest polluter, Gerald Gentleman Station, to continue operating without basic emission controls, despite a clear demonstration of damage to Badlands and Wind Cave National Parks. If the Regional Haze Rule is not improved, in 50 years just 10 percent of national parks required to have clean air will actually have it.

"Fortunately, this is one of those rare problems with a simple solution," said Reeves. "With a stroke of the pen, the President can close the loopholes and make common sense revisions to ensure that states and the Environmental Protection Agency are poised in the coming years to restore dozens of our most treasured national parks to clear, healthy air."

The Obama Administration is expected to revise the Regional Haze Rule before the end of its term. The NPCA analysis recommends that changes must include setting park-centered targets for reducing pollution impacting parks for the next decade, as well as closing loopholes that allow some polluters to escape the rule's requirements and greater accountability for states to reduce pollution within their borders.

A study has found that U.S. National Parks are plagued by serious air pollution.

A new analysis, released today by National Parks Conservation Association, shows that every one of the 48 national parks with the greatest Clean Air Act protections are plagued by significant air pollution problems and climate change impacts. In fact, air quality in parks can be as bad – or worse – than in some major cities due to emissions from outdated coal plants and other sources of pollution.

Of the 48 parks studied, 36 at times experienced "moderate" or worse ozone pollution according to the Air Quality Index developed by the Environmental Protection Agency. These levels of air pollution are risky for especially sensitive populations such as children who have asthma (roughly one out of every ten children in the United States). Even more troubling, four parks — Joshua Tree, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks — regularly had ozone levels that are known to be unhealthy for most park visitors.

"As Americans flock to our national parks this summer to enjoy the great outdoors, they expect and deserve to find clean, healthy air. Sadly that is not always the case," said Ulla Reeves, manager of NPCA's Clean Air Campaign. "Our parks remain under threat from air pollution, harming visitors' health, reducing visibility and driving the impacts of climate change."

The analysis — "Polluted Parks" — graded the pollution-related damage in the 48 national parks required by the Clean Air Act to have the best possible air quality. The report highlights 12 parks across the nation that earned a D or lower in at least one of three categories — threat to public health, hazy skies and impacts from climate change.

Key Findings:

75 percent of the 48 iconic national parks have air quality that's unhealthy at times.

Four parks — Joshua Tree, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks — regularly have air that's known to be unhealthy for most park visitors and rangers. In some cases, the parks have unsafe air for more than a month each year, usually during the summer.

Haze pollution limits how far you can see in 100 percent of the national parks. On average, visitors miss out on 50 miles of scenery — a distance equivalent to the length of Rhode Island.

90 percent of our national parks are currently experiencing extreme weather that scientists link to climate-changing air pollution: They are hotter, wetter, or drier than they were for most of the past century.

The Regional Haze Rule is the program under the Clean Air Act responsible for protecting air quality in our parks. But due to loopholes in the rule, states and polluters can game the system to avoid cleaning up. For example, Nebraska opted to allow its biggest polluter, Gerald Gentleman Station, to continue operating without basic emission controls, despite a clear demonstration of damage to Badlands and Wind Cave National Parks. If the Regional Haze Rule is not improved, in 50 years just 10 percent of national parks required to have clean air will actually have it.

"Fortunately, this is one of those rare problems with a simple solution," said Reeves. "With a stroke of the pen, the President can close the loopholes and make common sense revisions to ensure that states and the Environmental Protection Agency are poised in the coming years to restore dozens of our most treasured national parks to clear, healthy air."

The Obama Administration is expected to revise the Regional Haze Rule before the end of its term. The NPCA analysis recommends that changes must include setting park-centered targets for reducing pollution impacting parks for the next decade, as well as closing loopholes that allow some polluters to escape the rule's requirements and greater accountability for states to reduce pollution within their borders.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/media/what-happened-when-i-was-grilled-israeli-media-about-sanction-movement-against-israelWhat Happened When I Was Grilled by Israeli Media About the Sanction Movement Against Israelhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103787202/0/alternet_activism~What-Happened-When-I-Was-Grilled-by-Israeli-Media-About-the-Sanction-Movement-Against-Israel

The journalist made it clear he had no interest in understanding my views.

When I received an email from Jewish Voice for Peace asking if I would be interested in an interview with a major TV news program, “Ulpan Shishi,” I was intrigued.

A senior Israeli news anchor, Danny Kushmaro, wanted to talk with American Jews who support the boycott, divestment, sanction movement against Israel. Multiple emails and phone calls with Omri Kronland, a producer on the popular Friday night show, reassured me that the program was actually interested in our opinions and would be “respectful,” although I was aware of the likelihood for hostile questioning and bizarre final editing. This was, after all, Israeli TV. On the other hand, this might provide me with an unusual opportunity to speak directly to the Israeli public as an American Jew who is deeply concerned about Israel's treatment of Palestinians and believes that the status quo of occupation and discrimination will not change without outside pressure.

Kushmaro arrived two hours late and was in a hurry to get to the airport, so we did the videotaping standing up. He had already spoken with three other activists as well as representatives from the right-wing advocacy group StandWithUs, supposedly to give the impression of “balanced journalism.” He started out with, “So why do you want to boycott me? Why are you gambling on my life?”

His rapid-fire questioning and frequent sparring made it clear he had no interest in understanding my views. Here was an opportunity for him to talk with a respected physician and committed activist whose objections to Israeli foreign policy and treatment of Palestinians is grounded in the Jewish prophetic traditions: seeking justice and working with the oppressed. We could have explored the efforts to find a resolution to some of the thorniest issues in the region: the cost of Jewish privilege, the vexing issues of democracy and Zionism, the international excitement generated by a nonviolent Palestinian resistance movement. But this interview was all about Danny Kushmaro feeling threatened and misunderstood, the existential threat to all Israelis, and the arrogant and misguided attitudes of American Jews who do not understand the evils of the Arab world in general and Hamas in particular.

The program aired July 17 and despite my inadequate Hebrew, I could tell the visuals were not friendly and there was much more commentary than listening. The segment before us featured the title, "Israel Against the World." That certainly set the tone. The BDS segment opened with clips of BDS activists chanting and marching (evoking wild terrorists who hate Israel) and misleading infographics about the levels of foreign aid to other countries. Qassam rockets launched while I talked about the horrific devastation and suffering I witnessed while in Gaza in March. Even the background music switched when the activists were speaking. The victim narrative was deeply entrenched; Kushmaro revealed an utter lack of sympathy for the massive death toll and destruction in Gaza. He insisted Israel did not want to start that war; he viewed criticism of Israel, which he admitted is "not a perfect country," as disproportionate and biased.

With further translation, I learned that he referred fondly to the Rothschild family who bought land in Mandate Palestine (with the not-so-subtle implication that I am a traitor to the family name, although I can assure you I am not from that family). He confused anti-Semitism with criticism of Israeli policy and Zionism in an interview segment featuring two people from StandWithUs. I can only describe them as living in an alternative universe, talking about how hard it is for “pro-Israel” professors who are forced to keep their opinions quiet, face daily hostility, and are at risk for losing their jobs, even in the field of biology! They talked about Jewish students who cannot sit on student councils. Here Kushmaro nodded sympathetically, buying the world-is against-us mantra hook, line and sinker.

Had he done his research, he could easily have discovered that Jewish Voice for Peace has established an Academic Council to provide information and support for the many academics who have been attacked, harassed, threatened, blacklisted, fired, and denied tenure because of their sympathy to the Palestinian narrative, their criticism of Israeli policies, or their support for the BDS movement. The list is long and troubling: Ithaca College, North Carolina State University, DePaul University, Bard College, Barnard College, Columbia University, UC Santa Barbara, etc.

If he had any journalistic integrity, he could have critically explored organizations like Campus Watch, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel, AIPAC, and a host of others that have a long track record of McCarthy-esque tactics and of aggressively muzzling discourse on Israel as well as pouring millions of dollars into campuses to control Israel messaging. This includes an app for students to report their professors when they deviate from the party line. And then there is Sheldon Adelson who just raised $50 million to fight BDS and the $100 million the Jewish National Fund donated in June 2015 to the JNF Boruchin Israel Education Advocacy Center.

The tragedy is that this mish-mash of disinformation and alarming visuals is what passes for critical journalism in a country that is very concerned with its international image and seems unwilling to hear that its behavior is causing international censure. Kushmaro had a unique opportunity to educate the Israeli public about a growing international movement by listening to the voices of Jewish-American activists who are deeply concerned with the survival of Israel and who refuse to be complicit in its continuing descent into an increasingly racist, militaristic society that endangers not only Palestinians, but Jewish Israelis and both Diasporas as well. Instead, he chose to produce a segment that only reinforced the increasing insularity of Israeli political discourse and the mantra that "the whole world is against us," without acknowledging that critics of Israel have legitimate concerns about the state's policies.

The response to the program has been telling. A number of us have been showered with hate mail, one interviewee was forced to close her facebook account and JVP has received more than its share of hostility. At the same time, several Israeli activists sent messages of support and pride and a few curious Israelis wrote, just wanting to talk.

The journalist made it clear he had no interest in understanding my views.

When I received an email from Jewish Voice for Peace asking if I would be interested in an interview with a major TV news program, “Ulpan Shishi,” I was intrigued.

A senior Israeli news anchor, Danny Kushmaro, wanted to talk with American Jews who support the boycott, divestment, sanction movement against Israel. Multiple emails and phone calls with Omri Kronland, a producer on the popular Friday night show, reassured me that the program was actually interested in our opinions and would be “respectful,” although I was aware of the likelihood for hostile questioning and bizarre final editing. This was, after all, Israeli TV. On the other hand, this might provide me with an unusual opportunity to speak directly to the Israeli public as an American Jew who is deeply concerned about Israel's treatment of Palestinians and believes that the status quo of occupation and discrimination will not change without outside pressure.

Kushmaro arrived two hours late and was in a hurry to get to the airport, so we did the videotaping standing up. He had already spoken with three other activists as well as representatives from the right-wing advocacy group StandWithUs, supposedly to give the impression of “balanced journalism.” He started out with, “So why do you want to boycott me? Why are you gambling on my life?”

His rapid-fire questioning and frequent sparring made it clear he had no interest in understanding my views. Here was an opportunity for him to talk with a respected physician and committed activist whose objections to Israeli foreign policy and treatment of Palestinians is grounded in the Jewish prophetic traditions: seeking justice and working with the oppressed. We could have explored the efforts to find a resolution to some of the thorniest issues in the region: the cost of Jewish privilege, the vexing issues of democracy and Zionism, the international excitement generated by a nonviolent Palestinian resistance movement. But this interview was all about Danny Kushmaro feeling threatened and misunderstood, the existential threat to all Israelis, and the arrogant and misguided attitudes of American Jews who do not understand the evils of the Arab world in general and Hamas in particular.

The program aired July 17 and despite my inadequate Hebrew, I could tell the visuals were not friendly and there was much more commentary than listening. The segment before us featured the title, "Israel Against the World." That certainly set the tone. The BDS segment opened with clips of BDS activists chanting and marching (evoking wild terrorists who hate Israel) and misleading infographics about the levels of foreign aid to other countries. Qassam rockets launched while I talked about the horrific devastation and suffering I witnessed while in Gaza in March. Even the background music switched when the activists were speaking. The victim narrative was deeply entrenched; Kushmaro revealed an utter lack of sympathy for the massive death toll and destruction in Gaza. He insisted Israel did not want to start that war; he viewed criticism of Israel, which he admitted is "not a perfect country," as disproportionate and biased.

With further translation, I learned that he referred fondly to the Rothschild family who bought land in Mandate Palestine (with the not-so-subtle implication that I am a traitor to the family name, although I can assure you I am not from that family). He confused anti-Semitism with criticism of Israeli policy and Zionism in an interview segment featuring two people from StandWithUs. I can only describe them as living in an alternative universe, talking about how hard it is for “pro-Israel” professors who are forced to keep their opinions quiet, face daily hostility, and are at risk for losing their jobs, even in the field of biology! They talked about Jewish students who cannot sit on student councils. Here Kushmaro nodded sympathetically, buying the world-is against-us mantra hook, line and sinker.

Had he done his research, he could easily have discovered that Jewish Voice for Peace has established an Academic Council to provide information and support for the many academics who have been attacked, harassed, threatened, blacklisted, fired, and denied tenure because of their sympathy to the Palestinian narrative, their criticism of Israeli policies, or their support for the BDS movement. The list is long and troubling: Ithaca College, North Carolina State University, DePaul University, Bard College, Barnard College, Columbia University, UC Santa Barbara, etc.

If he had any journalistic integrity, he could have critically explored organizations like Campus Watch, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel, AIPAC, and a host of others that have a long track record of McCarthy-esque tactics and of aggressively muzzling discourse on Israel as well as pouring millions of dollars into campuses to control Israel messaging. This includes an app for students to report their professors when they deviate from the party line. And then there is Sheldon Adelson who just raised $50 million to fight BDS and the $100 million the Jewish National Fund donated in June 2015 to the JNF Boruchin Israel Education Advocacy Center.

The tragedy is that this mish-mash of disinformation and alarming visuals is what passes for critical journalism in a country that is very concerned with its international image and seems unwilling to hear that its behavior is causing international censure. Kushmaro had a unique opportunity to educate the Israeli public about a growing international movement by listening to the voices of Jewish-American activists who are deeply concerned with the survival of Israel and who refuse to be complicit in its continuing descent into an increasingly racist, militaristic society that endangers not only Palestinians, but Jewish Israelis and both Diasporas as well. Instead, he chose to produce a segment that only reinforced the increasing insularity of Israeli political discourse and the mantra that "the whole world is against us," without acknowledging that critics of Israel have legitimate concerns about the state's policies.

The response to the program has been telling. A number of us have been showered with hate mail, one interviewee was forced to close her facebook account and JVP has received more than its share of hostility. At the same time, several Israeli activists sent messages of support and pride and a few curious Israelis wrote, just wanting to talk.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/america-undergoing-major-political-sea-change-exploring-shocking-rise-bernie-sandersIs America Undergoing a Major Political Sea Change? Inside the Shocking Rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trumphttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103860622/0/alternet_activism~Is-America-Undergoing-a-Major-Political-Sea-Change-Inside-the-Shocking-Rise-of-Bernie-Sanders-and-Donald-Trump

The political spectrum doesn't want more conventional thinking.

America’s political center, if it ever really existed, appears to be shrinking.

On the left, Bernie Sanders’ issue-oriented presidential campaign of economic justice is drawing the crowds and generating the most passion, eclipsing his more moderate competitors. And on the right, Donald Trump’s loud promises to use his dealmaking moxie to fix the country, with a dose of racist comments thrown in, has pushed him to the top of the polls in 2016’s early states.

There’s no shortage of pundits writing off their surges. Surely, you’ve heard them all, which amount to saying that when the campaign gets serious, they will seriously falter. The latest analyses from this past weekend’s polling noted that both were doing well in two of the whitest states—Iowa and New Hampshire—but not in bigger, more diverse ones. So now these hallowed presidential proving grounds prove nothing?

But there is one explanation you won’t find among the politicos who are parsing the interior numbers in polls—such as the negative approval ratings, or appeal by race and gender. That explanation is that the political spectrum is changing, or stretching toward its blunter extremes, which also accounts for the muted enthusiasm for both party's leading establishment candidates, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

A shifting electorate is the last thing many pundits want to confront. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, pointing to four recent polls, merely says Hillary should worry about her rising unpopularity. He does not touch the deeper question: is she out of tune with what’s engaging the public now? His colleague, Phillip Bump says she’s lagging among whites in Iowa and New Hampshire, but climbs back up in later states where she appeals to non-whites. Sanders and Trump aren't doing that, he said.

At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, another go-to site for reporters to get zeitgeist quotes, the reflex is to dismiss both Trumps and Sanders for different reasons, rather than probe how the electorate may be shifting. Trump’s surge, according to associate editor Geoffrey Skelly, is because he’s well-known, loud, in a crowded field, and keeps getting press coverage. Even worse, the GOP idiotically tied participation in its upcoming presidential debate to how candidates are polling, he said, where Trump will be “attacked from all sides.”

One can go very far in political analysis by being cynical. But that does not mean you’ve got your finger on a changing pulse. Politico’s piece on Trump’s latest rise in New Hampshire and Iowa points to the politics of anger, especially against Washington power-brokers, which includes the GOP’s congressional majority.

What are people angry about? Who is giving voice to their problems, or offering solutions? CNN says the top concerns facing voters are the economy (44 percent), health care (20 percent) and terrorism (12 percent). If those numbers are accurate, it is not surprising that Sanders and Trump, on the left and right, have captivated voters because they are speaking outside the safe centrist political box.

Trump’s bragging that most of politics comes down to being the best negotiator has an appeal when the Republican-controlled Congress is bumbling at best. His slaps at immigrants are ugly, but there have always been racists in modern Republican ranks. Today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln, nor is it Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-corporate reformers. Most of their 2016 candidates have been recycling Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric or predictable policies benefitting the upper classes.

While it remains to be seen what broad new agenda will emerge on the right, it is not surprising that the cliché-ridden remedies spouted by a field of predictable candidates isn’t creating much excitement, even as they try to out-do each other on the far right. Trump’s rise strongly suggests something in the GOP’s base is shifting.

Bernie Sanders' surge is more easily traced, and also shows shifting voter sensibilities. His messaging has been saturated with specifics, from his speeches to e-mails. On Monday morning, he sent out a long missive seeking $3 donations that listed 12 issue areas and his solutions: jobs, jobs, jobs; raising wages; wealth and income inequality; reforming Wall St.; campaign finance reform; fighting climate change; health care for all; protecting our most vulnerable; expanding opportunity and equality; dismantling structural racism; college for all; war and peace. This is not political fundraising as usual.

It is easy to say that Sanders, like Elizabeth Warren before him, is pulling the Democrats closer to their progressive heart. But Sanders would not be as successful as he has been if Democrats in the electorate were not embracing his message. As one of Iowa’s leading pro-Democrat bloggers, BleedingHeartland.com, wrote this weekend, “Bernie Sanders continues to draw the largest crowds in Iowa--including roughly 1,200 people in West Des Moines on Friday—and polls indicate that he is cutting into Hillary Clinton’s lead among likely Democratic caucus-goers.”

Clinton still led Sanders by 29 points, 55 percent to 26 percent, with Martin O'Malley at 4 percent and Jim Webb at 2 percent, it reported, citing the latest polls. But “his message is resonating with a sizable part of the Democratic base, as anyone could see on Friday night during his town-hall meeting at West Des Moines Valley High School. I challenge any Democrat to find one substantive point to disagree with in Sanders' stump speech. Many people who attend his events are already ‘feeling the Bern.’ My impression is that the undecideds who show up walk away giving him their serious consideration. I doubt anyone leaves a Sanders event thinking, ‘I could never caucus for that guy.’"

BleedingHeartland continued, “Listening to Sanders on Friday, I was again struck by the senator's distinctive way of speaking. He packs a lot of facts and figures into his remarks without sounding wonky. He conveys a lot of passion without raising his voice often. Compared to many candidates, he says very little about his children and grandchildren. Still, his feelings about family come through loud and clear when he contrasts Republican ideas about ‘family values’ (a ‘woman shouldn't be able to control her own body’) with what family values should mean (for instance, a mom and dad having paid time off from work so they can get to know their new baby). Although the Sanders stump speech is overly long—pushed well past the one-hour mark by many interruptions for applause—he keeps his listeners' attention. Even my 12-year-old was still engaged….”

Next years’ presidential caucuses are a long way off, and the November election is even further away. It’s easy for pundits to dismiss Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, for different reasons, with respect to their eventual prospects. But doing so can overlook what’s happening now, which is the assumed frames, views and mood of the electorate are shifting, or stretching, or changing, and favoring the blunt and unconventional.

America’s political center, if it ever really existed, appears to be shrinking.

On the left, Bernie Sanders’ issue-oriented presidential campaign of economic justice is drawing the crowds and generating the most passion, eclipsing his more moderate competitors. And on the right, Donald Trump’s loud promises to use his dealmaking moxie to fix the country, with a dose of racist comments thrown in, has pushed him to the top of the polls in 2016’s early states.

There’s no shortage of pundits writing off their surges. Surely, you’ve heard them all, which amount to saying that when the campaign gets serious, they will seriously falter. The latest analyses from this past weekend’s polling noted that both were doing well in two of the whitest states—Iowa and New Hampshire—but not in bigger, more diverse ones. So now these hallowed presidential proving grounds prove nothing?

But there is one explanation you won’t find among the politicos who are parsing the interior numbers in polls—such as the negative approval ratings, or appeal by race and gender. That explanation is that the political spectrum is changing, or stretching toward its blunter extremes, which also accounts for the muted enthusiasm for both party's leading establishment candidates, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

A shifting electorate is the last thing many pundits want to confront. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, pointing to four recent polls, merely says Hillary should worry about her rising unpopularity. He does not touch the deeper question: is she out of tune with what’s engaging the public now? His colleague, Phillip Bump says she’s lagging among whites in Iowa and New Hampshire, but climbs back up in later states where she appeals to non-whites. Sanders and Trump aren't doing that, he said.

At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, another go-to site for reporters to get zeitgeist quotes, the reflex is to dismiss both Trumps and Sanders for different reasons, rather than probe how the electorate may be shifting. Trump’s surge, according to associate editor Geoffrey Skelly, is because he’s well-known, loud, in a crowded field, and keeps getting press coverage. Even worse, the GOP idiotically tied participation in its upcoming presidential debate to how candidates are polling, he said, where Trump will be “attacked from all sides.”

One can go very far in political analysis by being cynical. But that does not mean you’ve got your finger on a changing pulse. Politico’s piece on Trump’s latest rise in New Hampshire and Iowa points to the politics of anger, especially against Washington power-brokers, which includes the GOP’s congressional majority.

What are people angry about? Who is giving voice to their problems, or offering solutions? CNN says the top concerns facing voters are the economy (44 percent), health care (20 percent) and terrorism (12 percent). If those numbers are accurate, it is not surprising that Sanders and Trump, on the left and right, have captivated voters because they are speaking outside the safe centrist political box.

Trump’s bragging that most of politics comes down to being the best negotiator has an appeal when the Republican-controlled Congress is bumbling at best. His slaps at immigrants are ugly, but there have always been racists in modern Republican ranks. Today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln, nor is it Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-corporate reformers. Most of their 2016 candidates have been recycling Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric or predictable policies benefitting the upper classes.

While it remains to be seen what broad new agenda will emerge on the right, it is not surprising that the cliché-ridden remedies spouted by a field of predictable candidates isn’t creating much excitement, even as they try to out-do each other on the far right. Trump’s rise strongly suggests something in the GOP’s base is shifting.

Bernie Sanders' surge is more easily traced, and also shows shifting voter sensibilities. His messaging has been saturated with specifics, from his speeches to e-mails. On Monday morning, he sent out a long missive seeking $3 donations that listed 12 issue areas and his solutions: jobs, jobs, jobs; raising wages; wealth and income inequality; reforming Wall St.; campaign finance reform; fighting climate change; health care for all; protecting our most vulnerable; expanding opportunity and equality; dismantling structural racism; college for all; war and peace. This is not political fundraising as usual.

It is easy to say that Sanders, like Elizabeth Warren before him, is pulling the Democrats closer to their progressive heart. But Sanders would not be as successful as he has been if Democrats in the electorate were not embracing his message. As one of Iowa’s leading pro-Democrat bloggers, BleedingHeartland.com, wrote this weekend, “Bernie Sanders continues to draw the largest crowds in Iowa--including roughly 1,200 people in West Des Moines on Friday—and polls indicate that he is cutting into Hillary Clinton’s lead among likely Democratic caucus-goers.”

Clinton still led Sanders by 29 points, 55 percent to 26 percent, with Martin O'Malley at 4 percent and Jim Webb at 2 percent, it reported, citing the latest polls. But “his message is resonating with a sizable part of the Democratic base, as anyone could see on Friday night during his town-hall meeting at West Des Moines Valley High School. I challenge any Democrat to find one substantive point to disagree with in Sanders' stump speech. Many people who attend his events are already ‘feeling the Bern.’ My impression is that the undecideds who show up walk away giving him their serious consideration. I doubt anyone leaves a Sanders event thinking, ‘I could never caucus for that guy.’"

BleedingHeartland continued, “Listening to Sanders on Friday, I was again struck by the senator's distinctive way of speaking. He packs a lot of facts and figures into his remarks without sounding wonky. He conveys a lot of passion without raising his voice often. Compared to many candidates, he says very little about his children and grandchildren. Still, his feelings about family come through loud and clear when he contrasts Republican ideas about ‘family values’ (a ‘woman shouldn't be able to control her own body’) with what family values should mean (for instance, a mom and dad having paid time off from work so they can get to know their new baby). Although the Sanders stump speech is overly long—pushed well past the one-hour mark by many interruptions for applause—he keeps his listeners' attention. Even my 12-year-old was still engaged….”

Next years’ presidential caucuses are a long way off, and the November election is even further away. It’s easy for pundits to dismiss Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, for different reasons, with respect to their eventual prospects. But doing so can overlook what’s happening now, which is the assumed frames, views and mood of the electorate are shifting, or stretching, or changing, and favoring the blunt and unconventional.

A television anchor in Oregon just lost her job for doing something completely legal in her state. Cyd Maurer, a morning weekend anchor at Eugene’s ABC affiliate KEZI-TV, said she was fired after getting into a minor accident while out on the field.

Although the compassionate reaction of a company should be to make sure their employee wasn’t hurt, Maurer claims that she was forced to take a drug test per company policy. She failed when the test came back positive for marijuana.

It’s important to note that Maurer wasn’t intoxicated during the time of the accident. Unlike alcohol, marijuana can be detected in some people for days after use. For frequent users, drug tests can show traces of the drug for weeks. Even if trace amounts of the drug can be detected in tests days later, the affects of the drug usually subside around 5 hours after use.

Of course it depends on many different factors, such as the potency of the strain, the amount smoked by the individual, or the height and weight of the person. But if someone took a massive hit one day, it’s unlikely that they’ll be unable to function properly the next. I know this from both scientific data and…well…personal experience. Thankfully I work for a company that understands that smoking a little of the devil’s lettuce during my free time doesn’t negatively impact my job performance. Alcohol does.

“I wasn’t fired because I couldn’t do my job. I wasn’t fired because of my work ethic, my attitude, or my abilities,” Maurer said. “I was fired for enjoying a plant, on my own time, in the privacy of my own home. A plant that the majority of voters in Oregon believe should be legal.”

Legally, Maurer’s employer was within its rights to fire her, but that doesn’t mean that their company policy isn’t ridiculous. Although recreational marijuana use in Oregon is perfectly legal, Measure 91, which legalized possession and consumption, does not affect existing employment law. Employers who require drug testing can continue to do so.

There’s also still a huge conflict between state and federal marijuana laws. The U.S. government continues to have pot listed as a Schedule 1 drug, which means it’s still illegal as far as the feds are concerned. That gives employers in pro-pot states even more protections if they wish to fire workers who smoke. In fact, Dish Network was able to fire a quadriplegic man who relied on medicinal marijuana to manage his pain.

Isn’t it unfortunate that the one drug that causes the least amount of harm to humans also happens to be the same drug that can be detected in the human body for days or weeks after use? Maurer could have suffered from alcohol poisoning two days before her accident and the drug test wouldn’t have detected anything.

I would understand if KEZI-TV wanted to ensure that Maurer wasn’t under the influence during the time of the accident, so a drug test isn’t unreasonable under this context. However, if the test indicated that intoxication didn’t lead to the fender bender, they should have given her a pass.

As the country progresses with marijuana legalization, it only makes sense the companies evolve and adapt. There is a great deal of misinformation about pot, and it’s incredible to see how difficult it is for people to comprehend how harmless the drug is in comparison to socially acceptable recreational substances like alcohol.

Maurer is now spending her time working on marijuana advocacy, which makes me respect her even more for using an unfortunate experience to encourage much-needed change.

A television anchor in Oregon just lost her job for doing something completely legal in her state. Cyd Maurer, a morning weekend anchor at Eugene’s ABC affiliate KEZI-TV, said she was fired after getting into a minor accident while out on the field.

Although the compassionate reaction of a company should be to make sure their employee wasn’t hurt, Maurer claims that she was forced to take a drug test per company policy. She failed when the test came back positive for marijuana.

It’s important to note that Maurer wasn’t intoxicated during the time of the accident. Unlike alcohol, marijuana can be detected in some people for days after use. For frequent users, drug tests can show traces of the drug for weeks. Even if trace amounts of the drug can be detected in tests days later, the affects of the drug usually subside around 5 hours after use.

Of course it depends on many different factors, such as the potency of the strain, the amount smoked by the individual, or the height and weight of the person. But if someone took a massive hit one day, it’s unlikely that they’ll be unable to function properly the next. I know this from both scientific data and…well…personal experience. Thankfully I work for a company that understands that smoking a little of the devil’s lettuce during my free time doesn’t negatively impact my job performance. Alcohol does.

“I wasn’t fired because I couldn’t do my job. I wasn’t fired because of my work ethic, my attitude, or my abilities,” Maurer said. “I was fired for enjoying a plant, on my own time, in the privacy of my own home. A plant that the majority of voters in Oregon believe should be legal.”

Legally, Maurer’s employer was within its rights to fire her, but that doesn’t mean that their company policy isn’t ridiculous. Although recreational marijuana use in Oregon is perfectly legal, Measure 91, which legalized possession and consumption, does not affect existing employment law. Employers who require drug testing can continue to do so.

There’s also still a huge conflict between state and federal marijuana laws. The U.S. government continues to have pot listed as a Schedule 1 drug, which means it’s still illegal as far as the feds are concerned. That gives employers in pro-pot states even more protections if they wish to fire workers who smoke. In fact, Dish Network was able to fire a quadriplegic man who relied on medicinal marijuana to manage his pain.

Isn’t it unfortunate that the one drug that causes the least amount of harm to humans also happens to be the same drug that can be detected in the human body for days or weeks after use? Maurer could have suffered from alcohol poisoning two days before her accident and the drug test wouldn’t have detected anything.

I would understand if KEZI-TV wanted to ensure that Maurer wasn’t under the influence during the time of the accident, so a drug test isn’t unreasonable under this context. However, if the test indicated that intoxication didn’t lead to the fender bender, they should have given her a pass.

As the country progresses with marijuana legalization, it only makes sense the companies evolve and adapt. There is a great deal of misinformation about pot, and it’s incredible to see how difficult it is for people to comprehend how harmless the drug is in comparison to socially acceptable recreational substances like alcohol.

Maurer is now spending her time working on marijuana advocacy, which makes me respect her even more for using an unfortunate experience to encourage much-needed change.

The petition’s success comes after a persistent campaign on social media, with activist-linked Twitter accounts around the world calling on UK-resident marijuana smokers to sign up.

The drive comes in the same week that three police commissioners said that, in light of budget constraints, they would not expect their officers to prioritize the pursuit of people growing cannabis plants for personal use.

The petition was posted to the parliament website on Tuesday. By 6.30pm on Saturday it had reached 125,000 signatures, well exceeding the 100,000 needed for the government to consider debating the issue in the Commons.

It calls for parliament to “make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal."

The text describes the drug as “a substance that is safer than alcohol, and has many uses. It is believed to have been used by humans for over 4,000 years, being made illegal in the UK in 1925."

“With Uruguay legalizing, a lot of states in the US legalizing, government cuts, people don’t want to spend the money on policing something they find is harmless,” the 25-year-old said.

“There’s roughly 3 million adult [cannabis] smokers in the UK and I don’t think it’s right for the government to be criminalizing such a large section of society.”

Jason Reed, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (Leap) UK, said the petition by Owen, who is not linked to any drug reform activist groups, had come at the right time.

“It’s definitely an issue that people are now taking seriously because before now people saw cannabis reform as something that was for a certain demographic,” he said.

“I think it’s broken into public consciousness. People realize that their loved ones, they are involved in this, so treating people as criminals is quite a barbaric idea now.”

Whether MPs will take heed of the petition is uncertain. It will now be considered by the Commons’ petitions committee, which comprises 11 backbenchers from all parties, who have the power to press for action from government or parliament.

Lady Meacher, chair of the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform, backed the petition’s aim.

She said: “If relatively harmless herbal cannabis were regulated and made available in licensed outlets, this would lead to a reduction in the use of dangerous drugs and would create a safer environment for young people.

“Clear labeling would warn against use by those with a mental health family history. And use by children under 18 would be forbidden. The losers would be the drug dealers.

“A parliamentary debate would enable the facts and sensible options for reform to be considered. The priority must be the safety of children and young people.”

The Conservative government has already set out a hard line position on drugs. One of its first moves after taking office in May was to introduce a bill that would automatically ban any new psychoactive substance not specifically exempted, regardless of any evidence of harm.

The most recent figures from the Crime Survey of England and Wales, published this week, showed the number of people using cannabis had risen to a five-year high. It also showed the number of young adults using cannabis rose past a million for the first time since 2010-11.

While the numbers reporting using cannabis remain well below the levels of the 1990s and 2000s, the cannabis lobby has never been more organized.

Groups such as Norml (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) UK and the UK Cannabis Social Clubs have sought to replicate the success of cannabis legalization and decriminalization campaigns in the US and elsewhere.

They have had qualified success. On Tuesday, Durham’s elected police and crime commissioner, Ron Hogg, indicated that officers from his force would not seek to prosecute people using cannabis or growing it for their own use.

A longtime proponent of drug decriminalization, Hogg said scarce police resources were better deployed tackling dealers and organized crime. Small-time growers and users would benefit more from treatment to help them live drug-free, he said.

A day later, Hogg’s counterpart in Derbyshire, Alan Charles, made a similar statement to the Guardian. He said the force would always target organized criminals producing large quantities of drugs.

Charles said: “If you are talking about people growing a couple of cannabis plants at home on the window sill, I would not expect Derbyshire police to prioritize that.”

Meanwhile, the Dorset commissioner, Martyn Underhill, who declined to comment on his force’s strategy on cannabis without first consulting its police chief who was on holiday, sent a statement in support of Hogg.

“I really admire the work that Durham PCC Ron Hogg is doing in raising this debate about the decriminalization of cannabis in various forms, such as personal or medicinal use,” the statement said.

“I am discussing both issues currently with local MPs and Dorset police. It is for this reason that I am holding a drugs conference in January 2016.”

On Friday, Kevin Hurley, Surrey commissioner, was asked on Twitter if enforcing the law against small-scale cannabis growers was a priority for his force.

Steve Rolles, a senior analyst with Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told the Guardian that the statements from commissioners made explicit views that have been long held by some police.

“What’s different now with these guys is that they are speaking out,” he said. “They are making a public platform of views and policing practices that have been around for a long time.”

But it would be a mistake to think that all police share that view, said Rolles. Some still believe that, given enough resources, they can win the drug war. That split was also evident within the internal politics of the Conservative party, he said.

“There does seem to be a split between the more moral authoritarian figures, like Theresa May, and the small-state, freedom-of-the-individual Conservatives,” Rolles said.

“If you look at people like Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron, they are clearly more liberal in regards to the drug laws. But they are beholden to their little-England core voters and the whole Daily Mail agenda.”

The man who started the petition, James Owen, an economics student at Aberystwyth University, told the Guardian he felt people in the UK were ready for cannabis law reform.

According to its accompanying text: “Legalizing cannabis could bring in £900m in taxes every year, save £400m on policing cannabis and create over 10,000 new jobs.”

The petition’s success comes after a persistent campaign on social media, with activist-linked Twitter accounts around the world calling on UK-resident marijuana smokers to sign up.

The drive comes in the same week that three police commissioners said that, in light of budget constraints, they would not expect their officers to prioritize the pursuit of people growing cannabis plants for personal use.

The petition was posted to the parliament website on Tuesday. By 6.30pm on Saturday it had reached 125,000 signatures, well exceeding the 100,000 needed for the government to consider debating the issue in the Commons.

It calls for parliament to “make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal."

The text describes the drug as “a substance that is safer than alcohol, and has many uses. It is believed to have been used by humans for over 4,000 years, being made illegal in the UK in 1925."

“With Uruguay legalizing, a lot of states in the US legalizing, government cuts, people don’t want to spend the money on policing something they find is harmless,” the 25-year-old said.

“There’s roughly 3 million adult [cannabis] smokers in the UK and I don’t think it’s right for the government to be criminalizing such a large section of society.”

Jason Reed, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (Leap) UK, said the petition by Owen, who is not linked to any drug reform activist groups, had come at the right time.

“It’s definitely an issue that people are now taking seriously because before now people saw cannabis reform as something that was for a certain demographic,” he said.

“I think it’s broken into public consciousness. People realize that their loved ones, they are involved in this, so treating people as criminals is quite a barbaric idea now.”

Whether MPs will take heed of the petition is uncertain. It will now be considered by the Commons’ petitions committee, which comprises 11 backbenchers from all parties, who have the power to press for action from government or parliament.

Lady Meacher, chair of the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform, backed the petition’s aim.

She said: “If relatively harmless herbal cannabis were regulated and made available in licensed outlets, this would lead to a reduction in the use of dangerous drugs and would create a safer environment for young people.

“Clear labeling would warn against use by those with a mental health family history. And use by children under 18 would be forbidden. The losers would be the drug dealers.

“A parliamentary debate would enable the facts and sensible options for reform to be considered. The priority must be the safety of children and young people.”

The Conservative government has already set out a hard line position on drugs. One of its first moves after taking office in May was to introduce a bill that would automatically ban any new psychoactive substance not specifically exempted, regardless of any evidence of harm.

The most recent figures from the Crime Survey of England and Wales, published this week, showed the number of people using cannabis had risen to a five-year high. It also showed the number of young adults using cannabis rose past a million for the first time since 2010-11.

While the numbers reporting using cannabis remain well below the levels of the 1990s and 2000s, the cannabis lobby has never been more organized.

Groups such as Norml (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) UK and the UK Cannabis Social Clubs have sought to replicate the success of cannabis legalization and decriminalization campaigns in the US and elsewhere.

They have had qualified success. On Tuesday, Durham’s elected police and crime commissioner, Ron Hogg, indicated that officers from his force would not seek to prosecute people using cannabis or growing it for their own use.

A longtime proponent of drug decriminalization, Hogg said scarce police resources were better deployed tackling dealers and organized crime. Small-time growers and users would benefit more from treatment to help them live drug-free, he said.

A day later, Hogg’s counterpart in Derbyshire, Alan Charles, made a similar statement to the Guardian. He said the force would always target organized criminals producing large quantities of drugs.

Charles said: “If you are talking about people growing a couple of cannabis plants at home on the window sill, I would not expect Derbyshire police to prioritize that.”

Meanwhile, the Dorset commissioner, Martyn Underhill, who declined to comment on his force’s strategy on cannabis without first consulting its police chief who was on holiday, sent a statement in support of Hogg.

“I really admire the work that Durham PCC Ron Hogg is doing in raising this debate about the decriminalization of cannabis in various forms, such as personal or medicinal use,” the statement said.

“I am discussing both issues currently with local MPs and Dorset police. It is for this reason that I am holding a drugs conference in January 2016.”

On Friday, Kevin Hurley, Surrey commissioner, was asked on Twitter if enforcing the law against small-scale cannabis growers was a priority for his force.

Steve Rolles, a senior analyst with Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told the Guardian that the statements from commissioners made explicit views that have been long held by some police.

“What’s different now with these guys is that they are speaking out,” he said. “They are making a public platform of views and policing practices that have been around for a long time.”

But it would be a mistake to think that all police share that view, said Rolles. Some still believe that, given enough resources, they can win the drug war. That split was also evident within the internal politics of the Conservative party, he said.

“There does seem to be a split between the more moral authoritarian figures, like Theresa May, and the small-state, freedom-of-the-individual Conservatives,” Rolles said.

“If you look at people like Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron, they are clearly more liberal in regards to the drug laws. But they are beholden to their little-England core voters and the whole Daily Mail agenda.”

The man who started the petition, James Owen, an economics student at Aberystwyth University, told the Guardian he felt people in the UK were ready for cannabis law reform.

According to its accompanying text: “Legalizing cannabis could bring in £900m in taxes every year, save £400m on policing cannabis and create over 10,000 new jobs.”

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/environment/obama-kenya-what-president-can-do-help-end-poachingObama in Kenya: What the President Can Do to Help End Poachinghttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103514532/0/alternet_activism~Obama-in-Kenya-What-the-President-Can-Do-to-Help-End-Poaching

Nobody is better at combating illegal wildlife trade than the U.S. Here’s how it can stem the crisis.

The streets of Nairobi, Kenya, have been repaved, painted, and planted with flowers in anticipation of President Barack Obama’s visit this weekend. While in the country of his father’s birth, the president will appear at the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit, where he will discuss job opportunities with investors, business owners and African leaders. He will also hold a press conference with President Uhuru Kenyatta and, later, address the Kenyan people, using the opportunities to speak about economic growth and development, security and religious extremism in the region.

Obama is also expected to discuss a topic that ties all those others together: wildlife trafficking. Half of Africa’s elephants have been killed over the past 10 years to feed demand, chiefly in Asia, for ivory. Rhino poaching, which was nearly nonexistent nine years ago, was up 21 percent in South Africa in 2014. More than a million pangolins have been poached from Africa and Asia over the past decade. Criminal gangs and terrorist groups funded by the illegal trade threaten the stability of Kenya and other African countries.

As the world’s most influential and effective player in combating the scourge of many of the planet’s most iconic, charismatic and ecologically significant species, the U.S. can do plenty to help Kenya, and other countries where poaching occurs, to fight it.

Recent research at the University of Washington linked the DNA from seized ivory with DNA sampled from elephant dung across Africa to identify poaching hot spots. Though 15 countries were identified as sources, a great deal of the ivory seized over the last decade, represented by the blue circles, came from Kenya. Crosses mark the locations of Kenyan ivory seized. (Map: Marc Fusco; data: University of Washington and Science.)

The themes of wildlife and entrepreneurship fit together nicely. “Ecotourism brings in billions of dollars to Africa every year,” said Jeffrey Flocken, regional director, North America, for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. (The entire tourism sector contributed about $36 billion in sub-Saharan Africa alone in 2012, according to the World Bank.) In many countries, including Kenya, that tourism “is entirely generated by wildlife,” said M. Sanjayan, executive vice president and senior scientist at Conservation International.

As the son of a Kenyan, Obama enjoys wide admiration and corresponding influence in the country and the region. Any talk from the president about poaching while he is in Kenya will be heard beyond its borders. “Using Kenya as a platform to talk about regional or continent-wide conservation issues has to be the goal,” said Adam Roberts, chief executive officer of Born Free USA. “The rest of Africa, or least East Africa, is listening.”

Supply and Demand

The war against the illegal trade in wildlife occurs on two fronts: the supply side and the demand side. Help on either would no doubt be welcome, but with East Africa being the point of origin of so many trafficked animals, announcing new and increased measures to reduce supply would make the most sense during Obama’s weekend in Kenya.

The first place to do that is in the field — that is, to stop poaching where it’s happening. “Effective on-the-ground protection requires suitable operational support, including trained rangers; knowledge of patrol tactics; access to equipment and transportation; and adaptive management systems,” Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, told the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health during a hearing last week. The Kenya Wildlife Service has increased its anti-poaching activities since 2012 and seen some success, according to George Wittemyer, a biology professor at Colorado State University and chairman of the scientific board for Save the Elephants. But Kenya is a poor country, and KWS is not well-funded: Wittemyer told the senators that anti-poaching vehicles in Amboseli National Park would run out of fuel in the first few days of each month were it not for the grant KWS receives from the Elephant Crisis Fund, a zero-overhead joint effort of Save the Elephants, Wildlife Conservation Network, and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

For the most part, it’s not African people buying the wildlife products that come from African animals; tusks and rhino horns and the rest must leave Africa to reach their market. Seaports and airports are therefore a potential chokepoint in stopping the wildlife trade, said Roberts. The U.S. could have a major impact by helping African countries intercept such products: Allocating resources for X-ray machines and sniffer dogs at ports such as Mombasa in Kenya, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia would be a good start, Roberts said, as research by Born Free and the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington has shown that many of the wildlife products shipped out of Africa go through these three ports.

Engaging on these issues requires diplomacy and a gentle hand. Experts said Kenya welcomes the support of the United States but doesn’t want to be told what to do by outside interests. (Kenyatta, for one, seems receptive: On Tuesday Kenya joined the Elephant Protection Initiative, a program founded in 2014 by leaders of six African countries.) Governments and NGOs have a history of coming to Africa, starting programs and then leaving. Corruption exists on many levels, and wildlife trafficking creates even more temptation. In many rural communities in East Africa and elsewhere, some don’t even view wildlife as something worth saving; they see it as a threat to their crops or their safety and view conservation as a foreign concept.

Toward that last point, Sanjayan said the U.S. could play a lead role in supporting community-based conservation efforts, which are crucial to the long-term success of wildlife preservation and defense against poaching in Kenya and throughout Africa. Community-based approaches generally try to establish ways for local people to become stewards of — and profit from — their natural environment. Programs throughout Africa have trained people to farm or raise bees instead of hunt, protect wildlife instead of poach it, or operate facilities for tourists seeking to view native fauna. Sanjayan pointed to the conservancies operated under the aegis of the Northern Rangelands Trust — which was established in 2004 by the U.S. Agency for International Development and Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Conservancy — as examples of systems that help local people to see wildlife as assets worth protecting. “These community-based efforts are often the strongest forms by which people put eyes and ears on the ground,” Sanjayan said. “The community is involved, they’re getting support, and with them it’s more likely that poaching is going to die down.”

Kenyans in the Laikipia-Samburu region help Save the Elephants and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species monitor illegal wildlife killings in protected and non-protected areas near their homes. (Image: Save the Elephants)

Flocken and others, without prompting, praised the people in Africa who are already doing the hard work—even laying down their lives—to protect the continent’s wildlife. “These people are incredibly committed,” said Flocken. “They need more resources and tools, and the U.S. can help with that.”

The demand side of the wildlife trade can be even more complicated. Conservation experts said that if President Obama is to address demand for illegal wildlife products during his visit, the two most important steps would involve elephant ivory. The first, Flocken said, would be to unveil new regulations “to close the legal loopholes that have allowed the ivory trade in the U.S. to flourish.” Such regulations have been in the works for a while, and Flocken said the president’s appearance in Kenya would be the perfect time to formally announce them. “It would be a missed opportunity” otherwise, he said.

The second would be to fully protect elephants under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which only recognizes them as “threatened.” That's part of the inconsistency that allows antique ivory to be legally bought and sold in the U.S., which increases demand for poached ivory. (One of the other animals people come to Kenya to see, the African lion, is also being considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act and other mechanisms.)

Such actions would send a powerful signal to China, the single biggest driver of demand for ivory, which experts say is closely watching every move that Washington, Albany, and Sacramento make regarding ivory. For example, in November 2013 the U.S. crushed six tons of illegal, seized ivory. Within two months, China crushed 6.1 tons of ivory it had confiscated. “I thought that [amount] was a very interesting choice,” said John F. Calvelli, executive vice president for public affairs at Wildlife Conservation Society.

A Long History of Leadership

Any announcements of new or stepped-up initiatives undertaken by President Obama this weekend would be building on a long history of U.S. involvement, up to and including this past May, in combating the wildlife trade.

Secretary of State John Kerry visits the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a home for elephants orphaned by the ivory trade, at Nairobi National Park, outside the Kenyan capital, in May. (Photo: WildlifeDirect.org)

Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, in 2012 called on countries to join the U.S. in setting up a worldwide system of regionally based networks to coordinate enforcement. When Obama visited Tanzania in July 2013, he said at a press conference that he and President Jakaya Kikwete had discussed “an issue that’s inseparable from Africa’s identity and prosperity, and that’s its wildlife,” adding that “the entire world has a stake in making sure that we preserve Africa’s beauty for future generations.”

Obama did more than just talk, announcing $10 million in funding from the Department of State to provide technical and training assistance to combat poaching throughout Africa. Nearly a third of that money was earmarked for Kenya.

That same day, Obama issued an executive order establishing a Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking, combining the efforts of the Interior, Justice, and State Departments. The Task Force published a national strategy for combating wildlife trafficking in 2014 and earlier this year released its implementation plan, which includes a broad focus on enforcing existing laws, steps to reduce worldwide demand for illegal wildlife products, and building a coalition of public-private partnerships. Several sources indicated that numerous programs stemming from this national strategy, which they would not disclose, will be announced soon, and the Tanzania precedent of 2013 suggests it could come this weekend.

U.S. leadership in protecting endangered species didn’t start three years ago. The Lacey Act of 1900 protected a wide range of fish, wildlife and plants. Airborne species got their own boost from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The year 1973 brought both the Endangered Species Act as well as the establishment of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

When these laws and conventions didn’t prevent the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of elephants for their ivory between 1979 and 1989 (revealed through a continent-wide aerial census of elephants taken by the founder of Save the Elephants, Iain Douglas-Hamilton), the U.S. took two important steps, banning the import of all ivory in 1989, then, as a delegate to CITES, voting to ban ivory trade worldwide. That effectively stopped the ivory trade and poaching crisis until CITES, against the advice of many conservationists including Douglas-Hamilton, allowed sales of ivory to Japan in 2000, and again to dealers in China and Japan in 2008, acts which many say fostered the current poaching crisis by stoking Asian demand for ivory.

Even if President Obama doesn’t mention lions, elephants, or any other species while in Africa this week, the weeks and months ahead could see a great deal of movement on the poaching front, at both the state and federal levels.

Meanwhile, several government agencies are in the fight. The budget for combating wildlife trafficking at USAID has increased to more than $50 million in fiscal year 2014, up from $13 million in fiscal year 2012, reports Mary Rowen, the agency’s senior biodiversity policy advisor. She said the agency is working with the private sector to help transport companies limit the flow of illegal goods and supports conservancies in many areas of Africa.

The State Department, another key player, supports hands-on training efforts and offers foreign assistance funds to help partner nations. It just started a pilot program with the Department of Justice and KWS to expand aerial surveillance in conservation efforts.

Save the Elephants and the Tsavo Trust finance an anti-poaching Super Cub aircraft that flies over Tsavo National Park, the Kenyan home of around 12,000 elephants, including more than 10 percent of Africa’s surviving “great tuskers,” which are prime targets for poachers. (Image: Save the Elephants)

“It’s a joint counterterrorism and conservation program,” explained Susan Driano, Kenya desk officer with the State Department. State also engages in a lot of outreach work, including hosting screenings of documentaries such as Gardeners of Eden (which was produced by TakePart’s parent company, Participant Media).

Some members of Congress have been active in this area. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., has been speaking out about the global poaching crisis for years, and bills before the House and the Senate would raise the profile of wildlife trafficking as a federal crime and give law enforcement the same tools to fight it as they employ against major drug dealers.

Nobody is better at combating illegal wildlife trade than the U.S. Here’s how it can stem the crisis.

The streets of Nairobi, Kenya, have been repaved, painted, and planted with flowers in anticipation of President Barack Obama’s visit this weekend. While in the country of his father’s birth, the president will appear at the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit, where he will discuss job opportunities with investors, business owners and African leaders. He will also hold a press conference with President Uhuru Kenyatta and, later, address the Kenyan people, using the opportunities to speak about economic growth and development, security and religious extremism in the region.

Obama is also expected to discuss a topic that ties all those others together: wildlife trafficking. Half of Africa’s elephants have been killed over the past 10 years to feed demand, chiefly in Asia, for ivory. Rhino poaching, which was nearly nonexistent nine years ago, was up 21 percent in South Africa in 2014. More than a million pangolins have been poached from Africa and Asia over the past decade. Criminal gangs and terrorist groups funded by the illegal trade threaten the stability of Kenya and other African countries.

As the world’s most influential and effective player in combating the scourge of many of the planet’s most iconic, charismatic and ecologically significant species, the U.S. can do plenty to help Kenya, and other countries where poaching occurs, to fight it.

Recent research at the University of Washington linked the DNA from seized ivory with DNA sampled from elephant dung across Africa to identify poaching hot spots. Though 15 countries were identified as sources, a great deal of the ivory seized over the last decade, represented by the blue circles, came from Kenya. Crosses mark the locations of Kenyan ivory seized. (Map: Marc Fusco; data: University of Washington and Science.)

The themes of wildlife and entrepreneurship fit together nicely. “Ecotourism brings in billions of dollars to Africa every year,” said Jeffrey Flocken, regional director, North America, for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. (The entire tourism sector contributed about $36 billion in sub-Saharan Africa alone in 2012, according to the World Bank.) In many countries, including Kenya, that tourism “is entirely generated by wildlife,” said M. Sanjayan, executive vice president and senior scientist at Conservation International.

As the son of a Kenyan, Obama enjoys wide admiration and corresponding influence in the country and the region. Any talk from the president about poaching while he is in Kenya will be heard beyond its borders. “Using Kenya as a platform to talk about regional or continent-wide conservation issues has to be the goal,” said Adam Roberts, chief executive officer of Born Free USA. “The rest of Africa, or least East Africa, is listening.”

Supply and Demand

The war against the illegal trade in wildlife occurs on two fronts: the supply side and the demand side. Help on either would no doubt be welcome, but with East Africa being the point of origin of so many trafficked animals, announcing new and increased measures to reduce supply would make the most sense during Obama’s weekend in Kenya.

The first place to do that is in the field — that is, to stop poaching where it’s happening. “Effective on-the-ground protection requires suitable operational support, including trained rangers; knowledge of patrol tactics; access to equipment and transportation; and adaptive management systems,” Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, told the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health during a hearing last week. The Kenya Wildlife Service has increased its anti-poaching activities since 2012 and seen some success, according to George Wittemyer, a biology professor at Colorado State University and chairman of the scientific board for Save the Elephants. But Kenya is a poor country, and KWS is not well-funded: Wittemyer told the senators that anti-poaching vehicles in Amboseli National Park would run out of fuel in the first few days of each month were it not for the grant KWS receives from the Elephant Crisis Fund, a zero-overhead joint effort of Save the Elephants, Wildlife Conservation Network, and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

For the most part, it’s not African people buying the wildlife products that come from African animals; tusks and rhino horns and the rest must leave Africa to reach their market. Seaports and airports are therefore a potential chokepoint in stopping the wildlife trade, said Roberts. The U.S. could have a major impact by helping African countries intercept such products: Allocating resources for X-ray machines and sniffer dogs at ports such as Mombasa in Kenya, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia would be a good start, Roberts said, as research by Born Free and the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington has shown that many of the wildlife products shipped out of Africa go through these three ports.

Engaging on these issues requires diplomacy and a gentle hand. Experts said Kenya welcomes the support of the United States but doesn’t want to be told what to do by outside interests. (Kenyatta, for one, seems receptive: On Tuesday Kenya joined the Elephant Protection Initiative, a program founded in 2014 by leaders of six African countries.) Governments and NGOs have a history of coming to Africa, starting programs and then leaving. Corruption exists on many levels, and wildlife trafficking creates even more temptation. In many rural communities in East Africa and elsewhere, some don’t even view wildlife as something worth saving; they see it as a threat to their crops or their safety and view conservation as a foreign concept.

Toward that last point, Sanjayan said the U.S. could play a lead role in supporting community-based conservation efforts, which are crucial to the long-term success of wildlife preservation and defense against poaching in Kenya and throughout Africa. Community-based approaches generally try to establish ways for local people to become stewards of — and profit from — their natural environment. Programs throughout Africa have trained people to farm or raise bees instead of hunt, protect wildlife instead of poach it, or operate facilities for tourists seeking to view native fauna. Sanjayan pointed to the conservancies operated under the aegis of the Northern Rangelands Trust — which was established in 2004 by the U.S. Agency for International Development and Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Conservancy — as examples of systems that help local people to see wildlife as assets worth protecting. “These community-based efforts are often the strongest forms by which people put eyes and ears on the ground,” Sanjayan said. “The community is involved, they’re getting support, and with them it’s more likely that poaching is going to die down.”

Kenyans in the Laikipia-Samburu region help Save the Elephants and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species monitor illegal wildlife killings in protected and non-protected areas near their homes. (Image: Save the Elephants)

Flocken and others, without prompting, praised the people in Africa who are already doing the hard work—even laying down their lives—to protect the continent’s wildlife. “These people are incredibly committed,” said Flocken. “They need more resources and tools, and the U.S. can help with that.”

The demand side of the wildlife trade can be even more complicated. Conservation experts said that if President Obama is to address demand for illegal wildlife products during his visit, the two most important steps would involve elephant ivory. The first, Flocken said, would be to unveil new regulations “to close the legal loopholes that have allowed the ivory trade in the U.S. to flourish.” Such regulations have been in the works for a while, and Flocken said the president’s appearance in Kenya would be the perfect time to formally announce them. “It would be a missed opportunity” otherwise, he said.

The second would be to fully protect elephants under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which only recognizes them as “threatened.” That's part of the inconsistency that allows antique ivory to be legally bought and sold in the U.S., which increases demand for poached ivory. (One of the other animals people come to Kenya to see, the African lion, is also being considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act and other mechanisms.)

Such actions would send a powerful signal to China, the single biggest driver of demand for ivory, which experts say is closely watching every move that Washington, Albany, and Sacramento make regarding ivory. For example, in November 2013 the U.S. crushed six tons of illegal, seized ivory. Within two months, China crushed 6.1 tons of ivory it had confiscated. “I thought that [amount] was a very interesting choice,” said John F. Calvelli, executive vice president for public affairs at Wildlife Conservation Society.

A Long History of Leadership

Any announcements of new or stepped-up initiatives undertaken by President Obama this weekend would be building on a long history of U.S. involvement, up to and including this past May, in combating the wildlife trade.

Secretary of State John Kerry visits the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a home for elephants orphaned by the ivory trade, at Nairobi National Park, outside the Kenyan capital, in May. (Photo: WildlifeDirect.org)

Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, in 2012 called on countries to join the U.S. in setting up a worldwide system of regionally based networks to coordinate enforcement. When Obama visited Tanzania in July 2013, he said at a press conference that he and President Jakaya Kikwete had discussed “an issue that’s inseparable from Africa’s identity and prosperity, and that’s its wildlife,” adding that “the entire world has a stake in making sure that we preserve Africa’s beauty for future generations.”

Obama did more than just talk, announcing $10 million in funding from the Department of State to provide technical and training assistance to combat poaching throughout Africa. Nearly a third of that money was earmarked for Kenya.

That same day, Obama issued an executive order establishing a Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking, combining the efforts of the Interior, Justice, and State Departments. The Task Force published a national strategy for combating wildlife trafficking in 2014 and earlier this year released its implementation plan, which includes a broad focus on enforcing existing laws, steps to reduce worldwide demand for illegal wildlife products, and building a coalition of public-private partnerships. Several sources indicated that numerous programs stemming from this national strategy, which they would not disclose, will be announced soon, and the Tanzania precedent of 2013 suggests it could come this weekend.

U.S. leadership in protecting endangered species didn’t start three years ago. The Lacey Act of 1900 protected a wide range of fish, wildlife and plants. Airborne species got their own boost from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The year 1973 brought both the Endangered Species Act as well as the establishment of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

When these laws and conventions didn’t prevent the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of elephants for their ivory between 1979 and 1989 (revealed through a continent-wide aerial census of elephants taken by the founder of Save the Elephants, Iain Douglas-Hamilton), the U.S. took two important steps, banning the import of all ivory in 1989, then, as a delegate to CITES, voting to ban ivory trade worldwide. That effectively stopped the ivory trade and poaching crisis until CITES, against the advice of many conservationists including Douglas-Hamilton, allowed sales of ivory to Japan in 2000, and again to dealers in China and Japan in 2008, acts which many say fostered the current poaching crisis by stoking Asian demand for ivory.

Even if President Obama doesn’t mention lions, elephants, or any other species while in Africa this week, the weeks and months ahead could see a great deal of movement on the poaching front, at both the state and federal levels.

Meanwhile, several government agencies are in the fight. The budget for combating wildlife trafficking at USAID has increased to more than $50 million in fiscal year 2014, up from $13 million in fiscal year 2012, reports Mary Rowen, the agency’s senior biodiversity policy advisor. She said the agency is working with the private sector to help transport companies limit the flow of illegal goods and supports conservancies in many areas of Africa.

The State Department, another key player, supports hands-on training efforts and offers foreign assistance funds to help partner nations. It just started a pilot program with the Department of Justice and KWS to expand aerial surveillance in conservation efforts.

Save the Elephants and the Tsavo Trust finance an anti-poaching Super Cub aircraft that flies over Tsavo National Park, the Kenyan home of around 12,000 elephants, including more than 10 percent of Africa’s surviving “great tuskers,” which are prime targets for poachers. (Image: Save the Elephants)

“It’s a joint counterterrorism and conservation program,” explained Susan Driano, Kenya desk officer with the State Department. State also engages in a lot of outreach work, including hosting screenings of documentaries such as Gardeners of Eden (which was produced by TakePart’s parent company, Participant Media).

Some members of Congress have been active in this area. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., has been speaking out about the global poaching crisis for years, and bills before the House and the Senate would raise the profile of wildlife trafficking as a federal crime and give law enforcement the same tools to fight it as they employ against major drug dealers.

Americans diagnosed with cancer are at risk of losing their life savings because cancer drug costs are escalating almost as fast as the worst forms of the disease, according to a Mayo Clinic medical journal article decrying these costs signed by scores of nationally known oncologists.

“In the United States, the average price of new cancer drugs increased 5- to 10-fold over 15 years, to more than $100,000 per year in 2012,” the article says. “The cost of drugs for each additional year lived (after adjusting for inflation) has increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. This increase is causing harm to patients with cancer and their families.”

“Cancer is very scary,” Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, the lead author, told NPR. “Everybody’s shocked. But they don’t know about the second shock coming, and that is the financial destruction that’s coming with it. That comes in the course of treatment. That comes after the patient dies. All of a sudden, they see that their lifelong savings is being given to drug companies.”

Tefferi blames drug company greed, physicians who are too quick to prescribe new drugs without proven efficacy, health insurers willing to go along with upwards of $3,000-a-month co-pays, and a lack of federal government oversight adding checks and balances to a Wild West of drug pricing — especially for the federal health plan for seniors, Medicare, which is barred from negotiating drug prices. That prohibition was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.

“The prices are fixed by the drug companies,” Tefferi said. “There is no regulation.”

Outsized drug company greed is not new. Medicare, unlike the Department of Veterans Affairs, has been barred by Congress from negotiating for drug price breaks—one of the pharmaceutical industry’s sordid lobbying achievements. But the latest statistics cited in the Mayo Clinic’s article show how this trend has worsened.

To start, cancer will affect one in three people during their lives. Most health plans require co-pays of 20 to 30 percent of the total drug cost. In 2014, all of the cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—including promising approaches such as molecular-focused therapies—were “priced above $120,000 per year,” Mayo noted. That figure is double the average annual U.S. household income of $52,000.

“Patients with cancer then have to make difficult choices between spending their incomes (and liquidating assets) on potentially lifesaving therapies or foregoing treatment to provide for family necessities (food, housing, education),” Mayo said. “This decision is even more critical for senior citizens who are more frequently affected by cancers and have lower incomes and limited assets.”

Mayo noted that oral medications were most expensive, but their overall sky-high cost meant that “10 to 20 percent of patients with cancer do not take the perscribed treatment or compromise it.” Most ominously, because of the size of the aging post-World War II baby boom generation, there will be a “rising incidence of cancer in our aging population” and “high cancer drug prices will affect millions of Americans and their immediate families, often repeatedly.”

“There’s a lot of very expensive concept drugs that either have no or marginal benefit,” Tefferi said. “But there’s a huge marketing effort from drug companies to push for the utilization of this drug even though they know very well that there is really marginal benefit or no benefit… And that’s why I say their responsibility does not only lie in the drug companies, but the doctors that prescribe this drug.”

The Solutions Needed Now

The nearly 120 oncologists who co-authored the article, including more than 30 past presidents of the American Societies of Clinical Oncology, Hematology and Cancer, listed seven actions the federal government must do to end this crisis.

Create a post-FDA drug approval review mechanism to propose a fair price for new treatments, based on the value to patients and health care.

Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

Allow the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, created through the Affordable Care Act initiatives to evaluate the benefits of new treatments, and similar organizations to include drug prices in their assessments of the treatment value.

Allow importation of cancer drugs across borders for personal use (e.g. prices in Canada are about half prices in the United States).

Reform patent system to make it more difficult to prolong product exclusivity unnecessarily (patent “evergreening”).

Encourage organizations that represent cancer specialists and patients (American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Hematology, American Association for Cancer Research, American Cancer Society, National Comprehensive Cancer Network) to consider the overall value of drugs and treatments in their guidelines.

“The issue, at large, is directly harming patients and their families,” Tefferi explained in a video on the Mayo website. “It is a crisis, an ongoing crisis, that needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. This undermines our Hippocratic Oath, and undermines our responsibilities to our patients.”

The obstacle, he explained, was that “drug companies hold the cards in terms of deciding how much we have to pay for them, or the patients have to pay for them.”

The pharmaceutical industry’s response to Mayo’s call for fairer pricing was to recite the same talking points it has used for years in Washington, even though a series of recent independent reports have debunked its claims. The industry justifies its prices by saying the drugs provide great value to patients and drug makers need to recoup costs.

“Too often the focus has been solely on the price of a medicine, and largely ignored the value these medicines are providing,” Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, told the Wall Street Journal. “We’ve made tremendous strides in the fight against cancer—death rates are down, survival rates are up, and quality of life continues to improve.”

“We find neither explanation plausible,” wrote Donald W. Light, a fellow at Harvard University’s E.J. Safra Center for Ethics and a professor at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine, and Hagop Kantarjian, professor and chair of the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center, in the May issue of AARP Bulletin.

“The argument that drug companies are offering improved drugs for these higher prices is not true,” they continued. “Oncologists find that most new cancer drugs provide few clinical advantages over existing ones. Only one of the 12 new cancer drugs approved in 2012 helps patients survive more than two months longer.”

The two researchers also deconstructed the industry’s claim that it spends on average $1.3 billion to create new drugs and get FDA approval. The real figure would be one-tenth of that—closer to $125 million, they said, after deducting taxpayer subsidies, comparisons to other investment opportunities, inflating the cost of basic research and other factors.

“In sum, we find no credible evidence that the real research costs to major companies themselves for cancer research are higher than producing other drugs,” their AARP analysis said. “So why are cancer drug prices higher? We think pharmaceutical companies are price-gouging. Even worse, companies raise the prices on some of their older drugs by 20 to 25 percent a year. In the past decade, they have almost doubled their prices for cancer drugs.”

Light and Kantarjian said this strategy of “market spiral pricing” is an outrageous consumer rip-off. “No other advanced country allows companies to raise prices on older drugs. No other industry raises prices on last year’s cars or cellphones.”

“Congress should hold hearings on the spiraling prices for speciality drugs,” the two researchers wrote, echoing Mayo’s call for federal action. “And it should eliminate the rule that prohibits Medicare from negotiating discount drug prices… These changes could substantively cut the nation’s health care costs and provide incentives for companies to focus on developing clinically better drugs than slightly better drugs at sky-high prices.”

But right now, the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would slow the distribution of generic drugs—adding billions to annual taxpayer costs for Medicare and Medicaid, progressive economists say—by exempting drug makers from a new patent review board that was intended to keep companies from making bogus claims about their patents.

In other words, while some of the nation's leading cancer doctors are trying to draw attention to an unnecessary medical crisis causing financial ruin for many American households, the pharmaceutical industry is pressuring Congress to give it greater profit-making abilities.

Americans diagnosed with cancer are at risk of losing their life savings because cancer drug costs are escalating almost as fast as the worst forms of the disease, according to a Mayo Clinic medical journal article decrying these costs signed by scores of nationally known oncologists.

“In the United States, the average price of new cancer drugs increased 5- to 10-fold over 15 years, to more than $100,000 per year in 2012,” the article says. “The cost of drugs for each additional year lived (after adjusting for inflation) has increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. This increase is causing harm to patients with cancer and their families.”

“Cancer is very scary,” Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, the lead author, told NPR. “Everybody’s shocked. But they don’t know about the second shock coming, and that is the financial destruction that’s coming with it. That comes in the course of treatment. That comes after the patient dies. All of a sudden, they see that their lifelong savings is being given to drug companies.”

Tefferi blames drug company greed, physicians who are too quick to prescribe new drugs without proven efficacy, health insurers willing to go along with upwards of $3,000-a-month co-pays, and a lack of federal government oversight adding checks and balances to a Wild West of drug pricing — especially for the federal health plan for seniors, Medicare, which is barred from negotiating drug prices. That prohibition was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.

“The prices are fixed by the drug companies,” Tefferi said. “There is no regulation.”

Outsized drug company greed is not new. Medicare, unlike the Department of Veterans Affairs, has been barred by Congress from negotiating for drug price breaks—one of the pharmaceutical industry’s sordid lobbying achievements. But the latest statistics cited in the Mayo Clinic’s article show how this trend has worsened.

To start, cancer will affect one in three people during their lives. Most health plans require co-pays of 20 to 30 percent of the total drug cost. In 2014, all of the cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—including promising approaches such as molecular-focused therapies—were “priced above $120,000 per year,” Mayo noted. That figure is double the average annual U.S. household income of $52,000.

“Patients with cancer then have to make difficult choices between spending their incomes (and liquidating assets) on potentially lifesaving therapies or foregoing treatment to provide for family necessities (food, housing, education),” Mayo said. “This decision is even more critical for senior citizens who are more frequently affected by cancers and have lower incomes and limited assets.”

Mayo noted that oral medications were most expensive, but their overall sky-high cost meant that “10 to 20 percent of patients with cancer do not take the perscribed treatment or compromise it.” Most ominously, because of the size of the aging post-World War II baby boom generation, there will be a “rising incidence of cancer in our aging population” and “high cancer drug prices will affect millions of Americans and their immediate families, often repeatedly.”

“There’s a lot of very expensive concept drugs that either have no or marginal benefit,” Tefferi said. “But there’s a huge marketing effort from drug companies to push for the utilization of this drug even though they know very well that there is really marginal benefit or no benefit… And that’s why I say their responsibility does not only lie in the drug companies, but the doctors that prescribe this drug.”

The Solutions Needed Now

The nearly 120 oncologists who co-authored the article, including more than 30 past presidents of the American Societies of Clinical Oncology, Hematology and Cancer, listed seven actions the federal government must do to end this crisis.

Create a post-FDA drug approval review mechanism to propose a fair price for new treatments, based on the value to patients and health care.

Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

Allow the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, created through the Affordable Care Act initiatives to evaluate the benefits of new treatments, and similar organizations to include drug prices in their assessments of the treatment value.

Allow importation of cancer drugs across borders for personal use (e.g. prices in Canada are about half prices in the United States).

Reform patent system to make it more difficult to prolong product exclusivity unnecessarily (patent “evergreening”).

Encourage organizations that represent cancer specialists and patients (American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Hematology, American Association for Cancer Research, American Cancer Society, National Comprehensive Cancer Network) to consider the overall value of drugs and treatments in their guidelines.

“The issue, at large, is directly harming patients and their families,” Tefferi explained in a video on the Mayo website. “It is a crisis, an ongoing crisis, that needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. This undermines our Hippocratic Oath, and undermines our responsibilities to our patients.”

The obstacle, he explained, was that “drug companies hold the cards in terms of deciding how much we have to pay for them, or the patients have to pay for them.”

The pharmaceutical industry’s response to Mayo’s call for fairer pricing was to recite the same talking points it has used for years in Washington, even though a series of recent independent reports have debunked its claims. The industry justifies its prices by saying the drugs provide great value to patients and drug makers need to recoup costs.

“Too often the focus has been solely on the price of a medicine, and largely ignored the value these medicines are providing,” Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, told the Wall Street Journal. “We’ve made tremendous strides in the fight against cancer—death rates are down, survival rates are up, and quality of life continues to improve.”

“We find neither explanation plausible,” wrote Donald W. Light, a fellow at Harvard University’s E.J. Safra Center for Ethics and a professor at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine, and Hagop Kantarjian, professor and chair of the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center, in the May issue of AARP Bulletin.

“The argument that drug companies are offering improved drugs for these higher prices is not true,” they continued. “Oncologists find that most new cancer drugs provide few clinical advantages over existing ones. Only one of the 12 new cancer drugs approved in 2012 helps patients survive more than two months longer.”

The two researchers also deconstructed the industry’s claim that it spends on average $1.3 billion to create new drugs and get FDA approval. The real figure would be one-tenth of that—closer to $125 million, they said, after deducting taxpayer subsidies, comparisons to other investment opportunities, inflating the cost of basic research and other factors.

“In sum, we find no credible evidence that the real research costs to major companies themselves for cancer research are higher than producing other drugs,” their AARP analysis said. “So why are cancer drug prices higher? We think pharmaceutical companies are price-gouging. Even worse, companies raise the prices on some of their older drugs by 20 to 25 percent a year. In the past decade, they have almost doubled their prices for cancer drugs.”

Light and Kantarjian said this strategy of “market spiral pricing” is an outrageous consumer rip-off. “No other advanced country allows companies to raise prices on older drugs. No other industry raises prices on last year’s cars or cellphones.”

“Congress should hold hearings on the spiraling prices for speciality drugs,” the two researchers wrote, echoing Mayo’s call for federal action. “And it should eliminate the rule that prohibits Medicare from negotiating discount drug prices… These changes could substantively cut the nation’s health care costs and provide incentives for companies to focus on developing clinically better drugs than slightly better drugs at sky-high prices.”

But right now, the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would slow the distribution of generic drugs—adding billions to annual taxpayer costs for Medicare and Medicaid, progressive economists say—by exempting drug makers from a new patent review board that was intended to keep companies from making bogus claims about their patents.

In other words, while some of the nation's leading cancer doctors are trying to draw attention to an unnecessary medical crisis causing financial ruin for many American households, the pharmaceutical industry is pressuring Congress to give it greater profit-making abilities.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/activism/gop-candidates-are-frothing-islamophobia-will-any-major-democrats-stand-against-itGOP Candidates Are Frothing With Islamophobia — Will Any Major Democrats Stand Up Against It? http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103097840/0/alternet_activism~GOP-Candidates-Are-Frothing-With-Islamophobia-%e2%80%94-Will-Any-Major-Democrats-Stand-Up-Against-It

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are using code words and collaborating with some of the biggest fearmongers and not paying a price.

Cultural wedge issues have long been a feature of presidential campaigns, where Republicans in particular capitalize on the fears some have of the Other.

In 2012, the Republicans gravitated toward a new target: Muslims. They courted extreme segments of the Evangelical community who worked themselves into a fever pitch about living under sharia law and the dealing with the overthrow of Christianity.

With the 2016 presidential race in full swing, this Islamophobia is resurgent. Here are a few examples.

Encouraging Targeting of Muslims: In January, Texas Senator Ted Cruz joked that it's “not ticked-off Presbyterians” the United States is fighting; this month, Florida's Marco Rubio stole his joke, telling an audience our enemy is “not Presbyterian radicalism.” The coded language hints that Muslims are the problem (even though the majority of terrorism the U.S. experiences is from non-Muslim right-wing extremists).

Standing Alongside the Godfather of Islamophobia: Frank Gaffney runs the so-called Center for Security Policy, which will be hosting a conference this weekend. Five presidential candidates — Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, Carli Fiorina, and Bobby Jindal — will reportedly attend. Gaffney has suggested that Obama is a Muslim and that the Muslim Brotherhood has supposedly taken over the U.S. government.

Complaining That Their Opponents are Loyal to Islam: Although most of the GOP has dropped birtherism (with the exception of Gaffney, who some candidates are shockingly courting, as noted above), there is a new form of questioning Obama's loyalty. Mike Huckabee said earlier this year, “Everything he [Obama] does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel. The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community.” This is probably news to Muslim Americans targeted by unfair spying and police tactics and Muslims abroad who give Obama very low approval ratings due to his continuance of hawkish foreign policy.

Unfortunately, even some among the Democrats have joined the pile-on. Former Democratic presidential candidate and General Wesley Clark floated the idea of internment camps for radicalized Muslims; not Muslims who have committed any crimes, but those who have by some undefined procedure been identified as not sharing our values.

But for the most part, the Democrats are not joining the discussion. While a string of GOP candidates turn Muslims into a punching bag, Team Democrat is just nowhere to be seen. The closest Hillary Clinton came to addressing Muslims so far has been to tweet an Eid greeting; Bernie Sanders hasn't even done that.

Muslims make up roughly one percent of the U.S. population, and Muslim Americans aren't asking for special favors. But when one political party is making hate such a big part of its campaign, it behooves the opposition to step up to the plate.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are using code words and collaborating with some of the biggest fearmongers and not paying a price.

Cultural wedge issues have long been a feature of presidential campaigns, where Republicans in particular capitalize on the fears some have of the Other.

In 2012, the Republicans gravitated toward a new target: Muslims. They courted extreme segments of the Evangelical community who worked themselves into a fever pitch about living under sharia law and the dealing with the overthrow of Christianity.

With the 2016 presidential race in full swing, this Islamophobia is resurgent. Here are a few examples.

Encouraging Targeting of Muslims: In January, Texas Senator Ted Cruz joked that it's “not ticked-off Presbyterians” the United States is fighting; this month, Florida's Marco Rubio stole his joke, telling an audience our enemy is “not Presbyterian radicalism.” The coded language hints that Muslims are the problem (even though the majority of terrorism the U.S. experiences is from non-Muslim right-wing extremists).

Standing Alongside the Godfather of Islamophobia: Frank Gaffney runs the so-called Center for Security Policy, which will be hosting a conference this weekend. Five presidential candidates — Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, Carli Fiorina, and Bobby Jindal — will reportedly attend. Gaffney has suggested that Obama is a Muslim and that the Muslim Brotherhood has supposedly taken over the U.S. government.

Complaining That Their Opponents are Loyal to Islam: Although most of the GOP has dropped birtherism (with the exception of Gaffney, who some candidates are shockingly courting, as noted above), there is a new form of questioning Obama's loyalty. Mike Huckabee said earlier this year, “Everything he [Obama] does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel. The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community.” This is probably news to Muslim Americans targeted by unfair spying and police tactics and Muslims abroad who give Obama very low approval ratings due to his continuance of hawkish foreign policy.

Unfortunately, even some among the Democrats have joined the pile-on. Former Democratic presidential candidate and General Wesley Clark floated the idea of internment camps for radicalized Muslims; not Muslims who have committed any crimes, but those who have by some undefined procedure been identified as not sharing our values.

But for the most part, the Democrats are not joining the discussion. While a string of GOP candidates turn Muslims into a punching bag, Team Democrat is just nowhere to be seen. The closest Hillary Clinton came to addressing Muslims so far has been to tweet an Eid greeting; Bernie Sanders hasn't even done that.

Muslims make up roughly one percent of the U.S. population, and Muslim Americans aren't asking for special favors. But when one political party is making hate such a big part of its campaign, it behooves the opposition to step up to the plate.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/economy/alecs-scary-corporate-agenda-7-their-most-anti-democratic-and-science-denying-ideasALEC's Scary Corporate Agenda: 7 of Its Most Anti-Democratic and Science-Denying Ideashttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/103042770/0/alternet_activism~ALECs-Scary-Corporate-Agenda-of-Its-Most-AntiDemocratic-and-ScienceDenying-Ideas

ALEC's annual gathering revealed how right-wingers will push dangerous legislation across the country.

Starting Wednesday this week, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group's annual meeting.

Republican presidential candidate and ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month's meeting, as well as 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate.

ALEC, which drafts and markets model bills for legislators, has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles.

For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a "right to work" state and repealed the prevailing wage, another pro-union law; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.

A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond. Here are seven major initiatives that the right-wing group seeks to impose on America.

1. Attack Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution

Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.

In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan," which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan's implementation.

At this month's meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force--which is chaired by American Electric Power-- will consider a "State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC)," which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force's "Energy Subcommittee" will hold a discussion on "State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan."

Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the "Environmental Impact Litigation Act," which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state's Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws--such as the EPA's Clean Power Plan--guided by an "environmental impact litigation advisory committee" made up of political appointees and representatives of "individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions."

2. Undermining Renewable Energy

ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.

For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.

The latest effort is called an "Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments." The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make "carbon reduction investments"--which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.

3. Thwart Rooftop Solar

Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate "net metering," which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.

In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called "Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy." In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer's home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.

Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of "market disruption" that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.

The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" declares that direct-to-consumer solar is "antithetical to free markets."

At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies--two-thirds of crops require bee pollination--and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC's corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.

Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a "Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book "in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but 'not to worry' it's just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy"--medicine that Bayer produces, of course.

At this month's ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to "Apocalypse Now" (or perhaps Wayne's World), they titled their presentation, "'Beepocalypse Not."

Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC's response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state "preemption" laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.

With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.​

The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.

Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month's meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.

It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled "Payday Loans; 'Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.'”

Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE's funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.

In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws," ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservative Denver Post that she was "thumbing her nose at voters."

The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.

ALEC's hypocrisy around the idea "government that is closest to the people governs best" isn't just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month's meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.

ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The "Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee" will hold a presentation titled "Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing," where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.

And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed "Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters," which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.

5. Amend the Constitution

In recent years, one of ALEC's top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month's meeting.

A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades--even though it would cripple the federal government's ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters--but what is unique about ALEC's push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

Key to the Article V push has been the "Jeffersonian Project," the 501(c)(4) group that ALEC formed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the "Jeffersonian Project" is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.

This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC's Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force's private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled "States Constitutionally Saving “The American Dream” Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention."

Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a "runaway convention" has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.

ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amendment the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.

The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors' identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the "John Doe" investigation into coordination between Governor Walker's campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O'Keefe is a director.

CSG's Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG's "Compact for America" appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.

Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.

Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC's Article V plans at the group's 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, "You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both."

6. Continue Fighting "Obamacare"

ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the "State Legislators' Guide to Repealing Obamacare," and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).

Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.

At this month's meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal "maintenance of effort" requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.

7. Fighting to Protect Dark Money

After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC's corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their "right" to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.

A July 23 workshop titled "Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech" will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.

It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.

ALEC's funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in "dark money"--electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws--in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.

Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.

This isn't ALEC's first foray into this issue. Its 2010 "Resolution in Support of Citizens United" opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC's meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called "Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech."

ALEC's annual gathering revealed how right-wingers will push dangerous legislation across the country.

Starting Wednesday this week, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or "ALEC," will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group's annual meeting.

Republican presidential candidate and ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month's meeting, as well as 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate.

ALEC, which drafts and markets model bills for legislators, has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles.

For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a "right to work" state and repealed the prevailing wage, another pro-union law; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.

A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond. Here are seven major initiatives that the right-wing group seeks to impose on America.

1. Attack Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution

Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.

In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan," which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan's implementation.

At this month's meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force--which is chaired by American Electric Power-- will consider a "State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC)," which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force's "Energy Subcommittee" will hold a discussion on "State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan."

Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the "Environmental Impact Litigation Act," which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state's Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws--such as the EPA's Clean Power Plan--guided by an "environmental impact litigation advisory committee" made up of political appointees and representatives of "individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions."

2. Undermining Renewable Energy

ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.

For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.

The latest effort is called an "Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments." The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make "carbon reduction investments"--which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.

3. Thwart Rooftop Solar

Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate "net metering," which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.

In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called "Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy." In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer's home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.

Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of "market disruption" that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.

The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the "Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales" declares that direct-to-consumer solar is "antithetical to free markets."

At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies--two-thirds of crops require bee pollination--and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC's corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.

Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a "Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book "in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but 'not to worry' it's just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy"--medicine that Bayer produces, of course.

At this month's ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to "Apocalypse Now" (or perhaps Wayne's World), they titled their presentation, "'Beepocalypse Not."

Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC's response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state "preemption" laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.

With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.​

The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.

Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month's meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.

It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled "Payday Loans; 'Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.'”

Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE's funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.

In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws," ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservative Denver Post that she was "thumbing her nose at voters."

The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.

ALEC's hypocrisy around the idea "government that is closest to the people governs best" isn't just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month's meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.

ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The "Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee" will hold a presentation titled "Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing," where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.

And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed "Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters," which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.

5. Amend the Constitution

In recent years, one of ALEC's top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month's meeting.

A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades--even though it would cripple the federal government's ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters--but what is unique about ALEC's push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

Key to the Article V push has been the "Jeffersonian Project," the 501(c)(4) group that ALEC formed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the "Jeffersonian Project" is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.

This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC's Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force's private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled "States Constitutionally Saving “The American Dream” Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention."

Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a "runaway convention" has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.

ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amendment the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.

The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors' identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the "John Doe" investigation into coordination between Governor Walker's campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O'Keefe is a director.

CSG's Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG's "Compact for America" appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.

Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.

Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC's Article V plans at the group's 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, "You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both."

6. Continue Fighting "Obamacare"

ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the "State Legislators' Guide to Repealing Obamacare," and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).

Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.

At this month's meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal "maintenance of effort" requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.

7. Fighting to Protect Dark Money

After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC's corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their "right" to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.

A July 23 workshop titled "Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech" will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.

It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.

ALEC's funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in "dark money"--electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws--in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.

Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.

This isn't ALEC's first foray into this issue. Its 2010 "Resolution in Support of Citizens United" opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC's meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called "Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech."

The Social Security Board of Trustees has just released its annual report to Congress. The most important takeaways are that Social Security has a large and growing surplus, and its future cost is fully affordable.

It is sometimes reported that Social Security's current costs exceed its revenue, but if that happened, we wouldn't need a report to tell us. The whole country would know, because 59 million beneficiaries would not get their earned benefits as they now do every month. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient revenue to cover every penny of costs - administrative as well as benefit costs. The claim that Social Security is running a deficit counts only Social Security's income from its premiums, often called payroll contributions or taxes, and disregards one or both of its other two dedicated sources of income: investment income and dedicated income tax revenue. When income from all of Social Security's revenue sources is counted, Social Security ran a $25 billion surplus in 2014.

Social Security is projected to run a surplus again this year. And next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. These annual surpluses simply add to its large and growing accumulated surplus.

Over the next 5 years, Social Security has sufficient funds to pay every penny of benefits and every penny of associated administrative costs. That is true for the next 10 years. And also the next 15 years. Over the next 25 years, Social Security is projecting a modest shortfall of just .51 percent of GDP. Over the next 50 years, the projection is just 0.8 of GDP. And over the next 75 years, the shortfall is projected to be just 0.96 percent of GDP. Let's put those percentages in perspective. Military spending after the 9/11 terrorist attack increased 1.1 percent, of GDP. Spending on public education nationwide went up 2.8 percent of GDP between 1950 and 1975, when the baby boom generation showed up as school children.

The fact is that, as the richest nation in the world at the richest point in our history, not only can we afford the current levels of Social Security protections, we can afford to greatly expand Social Security. At its most expensive, in 2035 when all baby boomers are all over age 70, and indeed at the end of the 21st century, we are projected to spend considerably less, as a percentage of GDP, than Germany, France, Japan, Austria and most other industrialized countries spend on their counterpart programs today.

It is time to expand Social Security. Social Security's benefits are modest and don't cover a number of eventualities, such as parental leave and sick days, which the Social Security programs of other countries cover. It is time to bolster the economic security of America's working families.

Social Security is a solution. It is a solution to a looming retirement income crisis where most workers will be unable to retire without a drastic reduction in their standards of living. Social Security is the most universal, secure, and efficient source of retirement income that we have, providing a guaranteed, inflation-protected source of income that one will never outlive. And, expanding Social Security helps more than retirees. Because disability and survivor benefits are derived from the same benefit formula, increasing its benefits automatically improves the income of non-aged workers and their families. Adding new benefit protections, such as paid family leave and paid sick days would do even more.

Virtually all politicians have expressed concern about growing income and wealth inequality. Expanding Social Security and requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share will begin to put brakes on this dangerously and rapidly growing upward redistribution of wealth.

Although today's Congress does not seem likely to expand Social Security benefits, the Democrats could force their hand. Though one single payment is deducted from paychecks for Social Security, its revenue is divided into two separate trusts. From time to time rebalancing is required. One would think that Social Security trustees have the authority to do this simple rebalancing themselves. But that is not how the law works. Instead, rebalancing requires an act of Congress.

The Trustees Report once again projects that Congress must act before the end of 2016 to rebalance Social Security's trust funds. If that is not done, Social Security's disability benefits will be cut by around 20 percent. Rebalancing should be routine and has been so in the past.

However, today's Republican leaders have already made clear, through a rule adopted on the very first day of the new Congress, that they plan to hold rebalancing hostage this time around. Presumably, they are seeking a bipartisan deal, worked out behind closed doors, that cuts Social Security and enacts other unpopular changes. Instead, the Democrats should hold firm for winning policy and politics. They should propose enactment of one of the many Democratic bills which expands Social Security.

For example, The Social Security Expansion Act, sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), expands benefits in important ways while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2065. The Social Security 2100 Act, introduced by Representative John Larson (D-CT), expands benefits while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2090. Indeed, 43 Senators and 116 House members are on record in favor of expansion, in conjunction with ensuring that the wealthiest among us at long last pay their fair share.

Expansion is excellent policy. It is extremely popular. It solves many challenges - including the upcoming, manufactured crisis occasioned by the simple need to rebalance. If Democrats are smart, they will make this an issue in 2016 and smoke out their Republican opponents. Since the Trustees Report tells us that Social Security legislation must pass before 2016, Democrats should force Republicans to choose. Republicans in Congress can join with Democrats, backed by the majority of Americans, including their own base, in expanding Social Security. Or Republicans can seek to use their majority in Congress to enact the ideologically-driven, irresponsible and unpopular effort to undermine this bedrock of working families' economic security.

Social Security is a solution to our looming retirement income crisis, the increasing economic squeeze on middle class families, and the perilous and growing income and wealth inequality. In light of these challenges and Social Security's important role in addressing them, the right question is not how can we afford to expand Social Security, but, rather, how can we afford not to expand it.

The Social Security Board of Trustees has just released its annual report to Congress. The most important takeaways are that Social Security has a large and growing surplus, and its future cost is fully affordable.

It is sometimes reported that Social Security's current costs exceed its revenue, but if that happened, we wouldn't need a report to tell us. The whole country would know, because 59 million beneficiaries would not get their earned benefits as they now do every month. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient revenue to cover every penny of costs - administrative as well as benefit costs. The claim that Social Security is running a deficit counts only Social Security's income from its premiums, often called payroll contributions or taxes, and disregards one or both of its other two dedicated sources of income: investment income and dedicated income tax revenue. When income from all of Social Security's revenue sources is counted, Social Security ran a $25 billion surplus in 2014.

Social Security is projected to run a surplus again this year. And next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. These annual surpluses simply add to its large and growing accumulated surplus.

Over the next 5 years, Social Security has sufficient funds to pay every penny of benefits and every penny of associated administrative costs. That is true for the next 10 years. And also the next 15 years. Over the next 25 years, Social Security is projecting a modest shortfall of just .51 percent of GDP. Over the next 50 years, the projection is just 0.8 of GDP. And over the next 75 years, the shortfall is projected to be just 0.96 percent of GDP. Let's put those percentages in perspective. Military spending after the 9/11 terrorist attack increased 1.1 percent, of GDP. Spending on public education nationwide went up 2.8 percent of GDP between 1950 and 1975, when the baby boom generation showed up as school children.

The fact is that, as the richest nation in the world at the richest point in our history, not only can we afford the current levels of Social Security protections, we can afford to greatly expand Social Security. At its most expensive, in 2035 when all baby boomers are all over age 70, and indeed at the end of the 21st century, we are projected to spend considerably less, as a percentage of GDP, than Germany, France, Japan, Austria and most other industrialized countries spend on their counterpart programs today.

It is time to expand Social Security. Social Security's benefits are modest and don't cover a number of eventualities, such as parental leave and sick days, which the Social Security programs of other countries cover. It is time to bolster the economic security of America's working families.

Social Security is a solution. It is a solution to a looming retirement income crisis where most workers will be unable to retire without a drastic reduction in their standards of living. Social Security is the most universal, secure, and efficient source of retirement income that we have, providing a guaranteed, inflation-protected source of income that one will never outlive. And, expanding Social Security helps more than retirees. Because disability and survivor benefits are derived from the same benefit formula, increasing its benefits automatically improves the income of non-aged workers and their families. Adding new benefit protections, such as paid family leave and paid sick days would do even more.

Virtually all politicians have expressed concern about growing income and wealth inequality. Expanding Social Security and requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share will begin to put brakes on this dangerously and rapidly growing upward redistribution of wealth.

Although today's Congress does not seem likely to expand Social Security benefits, the Democrats could force their hand. Though one single payment is deducted from paychecks for Social Security, its revenue is divided into two separate trusts. From time to time rebalancing is required. One would think that Social Security trustees have the authority to do this simple rebalancing themselves. But that is not how the law works. Instead, rebalancing requires an act of Congress.

The Trustees Report once again projects that Congress must act before the end of 2016 to rebalance Social Security's trust funds. If that is not done, Social Security's disability benefits will be cut by around 20 percent. Rebalancing should be routine and has been so in the past.

However, today's Republican leaders have already made clear, through a rule adopted on the very first day of the new Congress, that they plan to hold rebalancing hostage this time around. Presumably, they are seeking a bipartisan deal, worked out behind closed doors, that cuts Social Security and enacts other unpopular changes. Instead, the Democrats should hold firm for winning policy and politics. They should propose enactment of one of the many Democratic bills which expands Social Security.

For example, The Social Security Expansion Act, sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), expands benefits in important ways while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2065. The Social Security 2100 Act, introduced by Representative John Larson (D-CT), expands benefits while ensuring that all benefits, including disability insurance benefits, can be paid through 2090. Indeed, 43 Senators and 116 House members are on record in favor of expansion, in conjunction with ensuring that the wealthiest among us at long last pay their fair share.

Expansion is excellent policy. It is extremely popular. It solves many challenges - including the upcoming, manufactured crisis occasioned by the simple need to rebalance. If Democrats are smart, they will make this an issue in 2016 and smoke out their Republican opponents. Since the Trustees Report tells us that Social Security legislation must pass before 2016, Democrats should force Republicans to choose. Republicans in Congress can join with Democrats, backed by the majority of Americans, including their own base, in expanding Social Security. Or Republicans can seek to use their majority in Congress to enact the ideologically-driven, irresponsible and unpopular effort to undermine this bedrock of working families' economic security.

Social Security is a solution to our looming retirement income crisis, the increasing economic squeeze on middle class families, and the perilous and growing income and wealth inequality. In light of these challenges and Social Security's important role in addressing them, the right question is not how can we afford to expand Social Security, but, rather, how can we afford not to expand it.